THREE-MONTH UNPAID INTERNSHIPS SHOULD BE PART OF EVERY DEGREE, SAYS NEW REPORT
A new report commissioned by the government has shocked students and graduates by suggesting that every university student should complete up to 12 weeks of interning as part of their degree — even if the placements are unpaid.
Er, hello? Have we not already discovered that unpaid work has been a total disaster for young people? That this supposed ‘quick fix’ practice has led the to the exploitation – or exclusion – of hundreds of thousands of graduates already? How exactly would rolling it out (and normalising it) to include undergraduates (as well as graduates) do anything other than make things even worse for young people looking for proper, paid jobs?
It also raises questions about what exactly young people are paying £9,000 a year in ‘tuition fees’ to their university for — if they are required to work unpaid for a sizeable chunk of that year. It is suggested that students complete these unpaid internships during their summer vacations — but isn’t that when many students are working in paid jobs to try and save money to pay for their degree?
While it is vital that graduates are confident that their qualification will be valued by employers when they finish university, it seems that this report is suggesting that higher education should effectively become a training bootcamp for the world of work. But if that is what it is going to be, shouldn’t employers be paying for it? Is this just the latest example of universities putting their profits first, and their students last?
The graduate unemployment problem is due to the fact that there are too many graduates and not enough jobs – not that graduates don’t have enough experience. Experience should be something you get while you’re doing a paid job, not something you get from university which you are paying to attend.
This supposedly brilliant suggestion about compulsory internships came as part of The Wilson Review, authored by the former Vice Chancellor of the University of Hertfordshire, Tim Wilson. In it, he sings the praises of internships as a marvellous method for helping graduates into work — and suggests that they should be rolled out by universities to help undergraduates in the same way. The genius says:
“The world has changed. If you look at a lot of internships offered in the corporate sector, these are highly competitive. I think we’re beginning to see internships being used as part of an extended interview process.
“…Internships may be paid or unpaid, depending upon the employer’s policy about such schemes…Graduate internships have become increasingly popular, and have acquired a strong reputation for helping students into full-time work.”
Seriously, where did they find this joker?! And does he know the first thing about what he’s talking about? Nowhere does he mention the minimum wage law, which states that most graduate interns should be paid at least the minimum wage for their labour. Payment of this wage is not optional – it is mandatory.
That said, the law is slightly different for students who are doing unpaid internships as part of their course – a loophole says that these interns need not be paid. Graduate Fog has been concerned for some time that this effectively gives universities (and employers) free rein to exploit students who are effectively doing proper jobs for them, just without a salary.
It has never been clear to us why a student should not have the right to be paid at least the National Minimum Wage for their labour, when every other member of society is protected by this law (at least in theory, if HM Revenue and Customs ever plan to show they give a damn about young people by actually enforcing it). For everybody else, the rules state that if someone has set hours and set responsibilities and is carrying out work that is of real value to their employer (not just work shadowing), they must be paid.
What Wilson does say is that firms offering paid placements as part of the initiative should be financially supported by the government through a tax credit or grant. Where internships are unpaid, universities should be urged to provide financial subsidies to support those students from poorer families who would otherwise be priced out of participating in the scheme:
“Where internships are unpaid, universities should use their ‘OFFA (Office for fair access, the universities access watchdog) fund’ (cash to help disadvantaged students) to support eligible students rather than condone a policy that could inhibit social mobility.”
Er, so only the very poorest students will receive payment for their work? What about everybody else?
While we are in favour of universities putting more thought into ensuring their graduates are employable at the end of their degree, we have already made up our minds that divorcing pay from work creates far more problems than it solves.
We have already seen with graduates how unpaid internships have devalued their labour, reduced the number of paid opportunities around and made it even more difficult to find proper, permanent, salaried jobs. Increasing the number of unpaid student internships will only make things worse — for students and graduates. If employers can ‘get an intern in’ to do a job for free, why on earth would they bother hiring – and paying – a proper graduate employee?
*What do you think about student internships?
Will they make things better or worse for graduates? Will more experience help students find jobs once they graduate? Are universities putting their profits before their students? Is this just another new way to rip off young people?
I think this is a step in the right direction, and calls out universities on their current activity of not preparing students for the real world of work as graduates – most current degree programmes woefully fail on that count. Students would still get their loans (which is more than graduates get) and it would most likely reduce the amount of time they need to be on JSA after university. It’s university courses that are not providing value for money – at least this way might increase that a little.
@redheadfashionista
I see where you’re coming from, but surely if every student / graduate already has this experience when they finish their degree, they’ll still have the same problem of needing to ‘stand out from the competition’ by doing even more! So actually won’t they all just have worked for three months unpaid for nothing?
… And this certainly doesn’t help to create paid graduate jobs (which is the main problem here). In fact, it will almost certainly help to reduce the number of paid graduate jobs around!
‘Seriously, where did they find this joker?!’ – Indeed!
I spent all my summer holidays as a student working to pay for my rent, so what next? Homeless students? One place, a well known electronics firm said for me to give them a call after I graduated if I needed a job, but their offices closed before I graduated. This was never a job related to my degree but if I could have had PAID work experience in my degree choice then I would have, otherwise, paying my rent and getting my degree were my priorities.
That this was commissioned by the government says it all. What they want is to create a permanent underclass working for nothing. That way they can’t ever be competition for the likes of Cameron, Clegg and Osborne, each individuals of little perceptible worth all held aloft by no more than privilege. This is yet another attempt to further remove us from the kind of level playing field where they and their miserable ilk could never have risen from the ranks of anonymity.
I was lucky enough to be born at a time of full grants and full employment and this expectation that today’s young people must work for free absolutely infuriates me! Please know many of us so-called privileged babyboomers – the only real privilege for most of us was being born when we were – are with you 100 per cent on this.
I worked in the summer holidays, for pay, because I needed the money! And that was in the days of full maintenance grants and tuition fees all paid. I still needed to work in the summer though to pay my rent. I’d have been well screwed if it was a requirement of my degree to work for free!
I’m sick to death of our young people being treated so appallingly. Here’s a tip. Might help. The so-called “grey” vote is much courted by politicians. Why d’you think they’ve kept bus passes – for which you only need to be a few years older than I am now! – and winter fuel allowances? Because they’re scared of older voters. Because they vote.
Get involved and get your friends to as well. Make sure you’re registered to vote. And vote! There is always someone on the ballet paper you can vote for. Or stand yourself if there’s really no one you want to put your X beside. Write to your MPs. Go to surgeries. Make it clear you are a big block vote no party should piss off!
Good luck.
No it doesn’t help to create graduate jobs, but it provides far more value for money than a degree programme that offers you 1 hour a week and a BA that’s worth next to nothing.
I find this to be a productive, workable step in the right direction that needs active support and revision, not straight out shooting down.
Fine redhead. So you do it if you want to. But it shouldn’t be compulsory.
I did two weeks – just two weeks – work experience one summer and it helped me get a job when I graduated. The union (NUJ) wouldn’t let me do anymore than two weeks saying if there was enough work for more than two weeks they should hire someone. Oh those bad bad unions eh?
@redhead
1 hour a week is a bit of an exaggeration and straight out shooting all BA degrees as worthless is also a bit extreme.
Could you elaborate in what way this is a positive step? The only obvious suggestion from this report is that work experience is valuable but that has always been the case and making it a workable solution would be creating paid internships, duh?!
Redheadfashionista,
It is not the responsiblity of universities to create graduate jobs, and even if it were, how would they do it? The responsibility for job creation lies with government and employers, surely.
Work experience might help prepare people for work but it doesn’t create work.
The reason why so many young people are unemployed and graduates are often forced into low-skilled worked is not because of a lack of experience: it is a lack of suitable jobs.
By all means, encourage work experience (I see no harm in that and potential good), but why not pay the people engaged in it, especially if you might be asking them to give up paid summer employment to accommodate course requirements to complete work experience assignments?
If you really believe that work experience is more valuable than education then why not advocate reducing the amount of education people get. If you really think that a BA is worth next to nothing, then balls to it, don’t do one and just get a bloody job. Or if you have one, don’t declare it on a CV. You are completely at liberty to do that. However, keep in mind that graduates apparently tend to earn more than non-graduates and that collectively (nationally) we benefit from having an educated work force. If you have evidence to disprove this I’d be genuinely interested to see it.
Finally, at the moment we are asking students to pay for their education, something previous generations took for granted as a right and common good. What is being proposed now is that people pay now for access to work. Now that is an extraordinary turn around given that work was something you might have anticipated getting paid for. Even slaves don’t pay to go to work. But heh, knock yourself out with the unpaid work experience-gig.
There are a number of Universities which have well established and well-run ‘sandwich degrees’, in which students spend the third year of a four- year degree working in industry. These are usually courses with a Business or Engineering focus, and in most cases employers are more than willing to put their hand in their pocket and pay a respectable wage. In the best case scenario these are win-win-win as the employer gets a capable and enthusiastic placement student, the student gains valuable experience, and puts some decent money in their pocket. (students do still pay a reduced fee to the University for the placement year – although the University does have some costs in administering the placement, see below). In many cases, the student also goes on to be offered a permanent role with the company post-graduation. This sort of programme is, I would suggest, unquestionably a good thing.
Sandwich degrees in arts and humanities subjects tend to see far fewer paid placements available however. Some students do an unpaid placement, which is far from ideal. Crucially though, these are not compulsory – even on a sandwich degree it is almost always possible to switch to a three- year version of the course with no placement year. I do not know of any student who has been forced to do an unpaid placement as part if their course, although I would be very interested to hear of any examples of this.
However, this new suggestion of a mandatory 3 month placement appears to have been given about 5 seconds thought, and there are all sorts of problems with it. Firstly, three months in long enough to make it hard to accommodate into an existing degree programme. Some courses may include it in place of an existing module, but others will tack it on to the existing programme, forcing students to undertake it in the holidays. Crucially, it is likely to be unpaid.
I don’t much like the existing loophole which allows formal work placements which are part of a course to be unpaid, but I can sort of see why it came into existence. Like most loopholes I imagine it was designed to deal with a small number of exceptions and special circumstances – where a student’s placement fell through part- way through the year for example, and they needed to get another urgently to complete the year. Like most loopholes it has the potential to be misused.
This new proposal risks not only embedding the principle of free labour for employers into higher education, it also risks undermining the existing, paid placement programmes that exist, often built up over many years. After all, why continue to pay a student on placement with you when you can have as many unpaid ‘student interns’ as you like? After all, the internship is compulsory, so the student doesn’t have much choice.
And it is worth considering that sandwich degree placements are *usually* well thought through to ensure that the experience the student gets will be suitable and match with their course. Often both employer and student sign some sort of placement agreement, and a tutor visits them on site during the year. With every student undertaking a compulsory placement will this sort of oversight realistically be possible at those Universities which have little experience of administering placements?
Finally Tanya’s point that ultimately you will see a sort of work experience ‘arms race’ is well made – if everyone has 3 months work experience, you’ll need 6 months to stand out etc etc.
I do wish sometimes politicians and their advisers would actually think about the details and implications of a proposal before publishing it!
“… but it provides far more value for money than a degree programme that offers you 1 hour a week and a BA that’s worth next to nothing.”
Value for money = working for free?
DOES. NOT. COMPUTE.
We’re very slowly becoming Americanised in our internship system – If internships become part of overall credits (College credit, in America) then we’re doomed. They’re system is rife with exploitation beyond anything the UK has ever seen.
… Fortunately we’re doing something about it before it’s too late!
I agree with redheadfashionista that this is a step in the right direction in terms of giving people experience. As it is, some courses already have a requirement to do a placement/year out and I think that’s helpful, as often university courses don’t (and sometimes can’t) give people the opportunity to gain a practical perspective on what they have learned.
What I don’t like about this proposal is the unpaid bit, obviously. I particularly don’t understand the bizarre need to remedy legal exceptions with more exceptions, so to fix the fact that students needn’t be paid, we must involve Offa to give grants to certain students but not all students… All this will create is a lot of paperwork, frustration and expense on the part of the taxpayer. Why not just make it so that the NMV legislation applies to students like it does to everyone else? That way, no one is priced out of anything and there is no need for a regulatory nightmare around this issue.
Also, to the usual objection that making these internships paid would reduce the amount of positions on offer, perhaps this would actually encourage careers services to make meaningful, practical connections with employers instead of just handing out leaflets and fluffing about transferrable skills to students.
“We are asking students to pay for their education, something previous generations took for granted as a right and common good. What is being proposed now is that people pay now for access to work. Now that is an extraordinary turn around given that work was something you might have anticipated getting paid for. Even slaves don’t pay to go to work.”
Exactly Rab! Thanks.
Two more BIG problems:-
1)how do you find enough of the high quality placements (the only ones that might be worth doing as part of your degree)for every degree student? Most UK employers are far too hard-pressed right now to get stuck into designing good placements, mentoring the students, documenting their progress etc …
(2) university careers services are cut to the bone – how can they find enough “spare” resources to help students (eg those reading Philosophy, Theology, etc) choose the placements likely to be of most value to their future careers?
@CareersPartnershipUK
1) This is a problem – you’re right. Perhaps a solution is to do what a few of my friends do at University. That is, they are assigned a practical assignment that they have to document from beginning to end. Whether the project is a success or not, they have to review and analyse why things didn’t work. One example my friend took part in was as a Business and Finance student, they were given 4 weeks of access to a stock-market simulator. They were all given £X and were told to apply sound investment principles to make the most profit they could. They had to document their experience from start to end in light of academic literature, etc. I thought it sounded fantastic – perhaps not *real* work experience, but where that’s not available, what’s wrong with simulation?
2) Perhaps Universities could employ 3x more people after tripling fees? Jus’ sayin’
Dear God. I spent every spare minute I had while at uni working in a paid part-time job, without which I would not have been able to afford to stay at university. I struggle to think when I would have had the time to do a THREE MONTH placement for free!!
@redheadfashionista Posted March 15, 2012 at 1:38 PM
Unless employers contribute to training, specifically in terms of providing complete sponsorship or paid placements, neither employers nor their representatives can criticise Colleges or Universities on the basis of “failing to prepare graduates for the world of work”.
But, conversely, the idea of requiring undergraduates to spend even an unpaid internship is excellent…. but contingent on the employer addressing the issue of student fees, and paying not simply Student Tuition Fees but also the cost of living expenses.
Remember – it’s a heck of a lot easier to go to your polling station and vote than it is to be forced to work for three months for nothing. And that’s what will happen if you don’t vote.
Get registered NOW! Vote in the forthcoming local elections if you have them and you’re registered. Write to your MPs and say why this policy is wrong. Go to local surgeries. Get involved.
A commentator on BBC Breakfast this morning said the reason 20-somethings were attacked in this way while benefits for 60-somethings remained unchanged was very simple: 60-somethings vote.
So please don’t let me hear your generation say it can’t be bothered to vote. What’s the point. They’re all the same. They’re not. Vote. Join in. You’re a massive voting block and politicians should be shit scared of you. Do it. PLEASE!
I think internship are a valuable experience and it is up to you whether you are ripped off. I graduated from in 2011 with a first and no clue which career path I wanted to take. I have completed three different internship; the first in PR, then for a VC and the last for social media. I was unpaid for all of them but made sure that there were strict terms ie: I would only work for free for max of 3 months, travel and food had to be covered. I learned loads and would not have changed them for anything. If only I had done them as part of my degree I could have saved a year of being unpaid! Job aggregators like this one http://www.adzuna.co.uk/jobs/internship are excellent for finding internships. Highly recommended
Flora – I’m glad you had some good experiences, and I agree that volunteers need to put their foot down about what they will and won’t do in order to get the most out of their placements. However, I really don’t think a government mandated scheme for students would allow these placements to be completed on individual terms. I also don’t think it’s acceptable for most people to work for free for nine months to be in with the chance of paid work – not on top of committing to your JSA agreement by applying for jobs and living with the threat of being taken out of your placements so you can work at supermarkets for free on the Work Programmes.
Ultimately, the government needs to create opportunities for young people, not harass us into working for free in order to “improve our chances”.
I agree that interns should be paid for the work that they do, but in my opinion there are far too many graduates that think the world owes them a job because they have a degree! It amazes me how many graduates that lack basic employability skills and wonder why they cannot get a job after they graduate.
I do believe that prepping students for the ‘world of work’ is far too late at graduate level. I also do think that Universities do not do enough for their students. Yes there may be careers advice, employability seminars and so on, but is this really enough for the tuition paid?
On the other hand, if graduates are wanting the best jobs after graduation then they really need to be getting work experience during their studies off their own back and not expect for things to just fall in their laps. I am encouraging my sister who is only 16 to get as little as one day a week free work experience in order to better herself and get a taste of work before University life. They are too many lazy students out there who, like I mentioned before, expect the world to be given to them on a plate because they have a degree!