INEXPERIENCED WORKERS MUST “FACE THE CONSEQUENCES” OF TOO MUCH FUN AT UNI, SAYS YOUNG JOURNALIST
A young journalist has sparked intense debate online after claiming many of her fellow graduates are not worth paying because they don’t have the skills and experience that employers want – and that “Many companies are doing interns a favour, not the other way around”. But is she a traitor to her generation – or a victim of exploitation herself?
In an article posted yesterday on Independent Voices (the Independent’s comment section), Lauren Razavi – a graduate of the University of East Anglia – wrote:
“Employers shouldn’t be expected to pay for interns who bring no value to their business. Many companies are doing interns a favour, not the other way around. We don’t live in a society where we can pat ourselves on the back for simply having a degree. It’s not enough: organisations want skilled workers in today’s job market.
“…I’m not saying that all graduates should be forced into free labour after university. Those who have used their time wisely whilst studying definitely shouldn’t be doing unpaid work. But there’s a huge distinction between those who have taken advantage of the opportunities university offers and those who haven’t.
“…In the real world, having maintained an exuberant lifestyle for the entirety of your degree won’t get you into a paid internship or graduate-level employment. Those who leave university unskilled and inexperienced need a foot in the door. This is where unpaid internships are useful.
“And, before someone says it, this isn’t about privilege. This is not about the bank of mummy and daddy funding you to live in Kensington. Nor is it about sustaining an unpaid working life of popping down to Starbucks to buy coffee for the office every day for six months.
“Some of the most motivated, proactive and hard-grafting people I know are from low-income backgrounds. I am too. Largely, they’re the ones who made the most of their time studying and have gone on to accomplish great things. Money — or lack thereof — is not an excuse to slack off.
“…The position of being underqualified when you graduate comes from an irresponsible attitude towards your time at university. Young people should have to face the consequences of missed opportunities.
“Nothing comes from nothing, and that’s an important lesson to learn. Let’s reach the point where unpaid internships are obsolete because the pool of graduates is of such a high standard, they should all be paid. At the moment, that’s simply not the case.”
In response to the piece, Graduate Fog’s founder Tanya de Grunwald wrote:
“This kind of piece makes me really sad but it’s a good reminder of why it’s so vital for us to keep campaigning on this issue.
“Lauren, you’re clearly a smart, articulate girl with no time for whingers. Your talent has obviously got you a long way, and that you deserve to be proud of yourself! But I would say you are the exception to the rule. I hear from hundreds of unpaid interns every week and I can tell you that the problem is completely out of control. The vast majority of people who describe themselves as unpaid interns are working extremely hard doing proper, full-time jobs for no wages.
“…I think what you’re referring to is the current grey area between work and work shadowing. And I think you’re right that a clearer distinction should be made, as this would help both employers and young workers. If something is a job, advertise it properly, interview candidates, pick the best one and pay them a wage. If someone’s output isn’t valuable enough to pay them, they can always do some (genuine) volunteering or go on a course to build their skills and confidence. But people doing real, valuable work must be paid for their contribution. Divorcing pay from work leads nowhere good.”
*WHAT DO YOU YOU THINK OF LAUREN’S COMMENTS?
Has she betrayed her fellow graduates by siding with employers – or does she make a good point? Or has her view of unpaid internships been distorted by being exploited herself? Post your comment below this story…
It’s definitely about that grey area! I’m all for an unpaid internship of 2-4 weeks, but months – even a year – of unpaid work? That’s not job shadowing, that’s doing a full time job.
I had the smallest piece of sympathy for Lauren. Until I read the article.
What a load of self-serving, pretentious, nonsense click-bait.
So, it is the fault of Graduates that employers can’t be arsed to pay a fair wage (or even a wage) for a job/internship? Apparently if you follow her ‘seven-step’ programme to nirvana you are absolutely guaranteed a plummy job in the media.
Well, I have NEWS for you Lauren. Outside of your vacuous circle of reference, the majority of graduates do build up valuable skills whilst studying for a degree. Maybe some of them don’t have time doing ‘extracurricular’ stuff to the extent needed because they are too busy paying the BILLS? How do you square the circle of those mature graduates, those with caring or family responsibilities, those working class kids with limited financial support who need to WORK to get their way through Uni, rather than arse about on the Varsity team?
But, no. According to your narrow frame of reference, anyone who works in an unpaid internship MUST be a loser. Because obviously losers are the kinds of people who would be seeking out those opportunities in the first place to prove themselves? The getting pissed/going to parties everyday student stereotype is an extremely rare minority these days. People just can’t afford to, especially when they are racking up Student Loan debt that the UK Government may decide to sell to Private Loan Collectors.
You are living in Cloud-Cuckoo land Lauren if you think ANYONE can balance paid and unpaid work – SOME can not ANYONE. You discount the fact that working for two weeks unpaid is inherently less valuable than working unpaid for six months, and unfortunately the SYSTEM is set up that way to discourage those from low-incomes to enter graduate professions because in real-life land, you cannot sustain that way of life for very long without incurring serious debt. I think you have been watching the ‘Pursuit of Hapyness’ a bit too much.
Oh, privilege? We aren’t allowed to speak about that are we? Every single example you quote doesn’t provide the full context. Privilege extends right from school up through to the university sphere. Saying we can’t talk about privilege is convenient for you, coming from a supposedly ‘low-income’ background. Why don’t you quantify that?
But well done for your smug piece of tripe writing. I am sure you have a warm glow from setting the world to rights whilst you sip your cappucino in London.
It would be comforting to think of her as a victim, but her argument is not that everyone should have to do unpaid labour; it is actually that other people, people other than her, don’t deserve even the national minimum wage for their labour.
She seems not to understand most people’s circumstances or appreciate minimum wage law. It is ridiculous to argue that ‘[a]ny new graduate can balance an unpaid internship with paid work to sustain themselves’, let alone that ‘they should have to do’ so.
Obviously, that doesn’t even begin to address how people dependent upon social security are supposed to compete (and she seems to approach everything from the angle of competition for good jobs, rather than cooperation to protect minimum acceptable standards of living).
She fails to see – refuses to recognise? – that commercial companies are not altruistically providing work experience but exploiting workers’ desperation to get unpaid labour. Of course, it wouldn’t help her to compete on that market if she were honest about her potential employers’ behaviour…
Finally, she seems (understandably, but nonetheless) ignorant of the voluntarisation of cultural/community work, such that unpaid labour is not merely an exploitative way of selecting workers, but a way of decimating or destroying the entry-level workforce (such as in the museum sector).
(And although it emerges from her disdain for the value of her peers’ labour, since she doesn’t believe that unskilled labour should be unpaid, it does end up with her arguing that (most) people shouldn’t be able to compete with her for work unless they can afford to get experience without pay.)
I dunno. Call me old fashioned. Call me a bit of a hippy. Call me late for dinner. Call me a cab but whatever happened to having fun at college? Whatever happened to studying for the sake for it, learning stuff because it enriched your mind and widened your outlook? Whatever happened to the Teenage Dream?
Must everything be about making money? Getting a job? Becoming a white mouse on a wheel that turns turn turn for the rest of your life?
I worked while at college, for the BBC, edited the student newspaper in my final year, got a job soon as I left, in journalism, and have worked non-stop since. You know what I regret? You know what I’ll be thinking about on my death bed? It won’t be, gee but I wish I’d worked harder at college and had less fun!
@LauraMarcus.
“Call me a cab.”
Best comment ever. 🙂
Hi all – great comments!
So is it fair to say that the verdict is leaning towards Traitor as opposed to Victim?
If so, I’m going to fly the flag for Victim! I think Lauren’s piece has all the hallmarks of a distorted view of the value of labour, which is likely to have happened as Lauren has been exposed to all sorts of ideas and assumptions which effectively undermine graduates’ belief in the value of their work, whether it is skilled or unskilled.
Too many employers repeat over and over that young workers’ contribution has no value – also the subliminal message when they don’t pay you – which slowly chips away, distorts your judgement and leads you to undervalue your own work. The logic of Lauren’s article is confused, but she seems to believe this lie that young people need extra courses, training and experience before they can complete work that is of value. This is just not true. You can stuff an envelope with no experience or having done a course. You can answer phones, run errands, send emails, man Twitter and Facebook without experience… Yet ALL these tasks are valuable. And put together, don’t they sound a bit like an internship? Yes, Lauren has more experience than many of her peers. But that doesn’t mean that their work is worthless. And she should have been paid while she was gaining this experience, the minute her output became valuable to her employer. I suspect she wasn’t, which is what has skewed her ideas.
Thank you NewsatHoff!
Tanya, I agree with you entirely. I left school at 16 and went straight into a job in an office. I’d had no office work experience at all. Had worked in a shop on Saturdays but that wasn’t anything like the kind of work I was required to do which was, as you say, stuffing envelopes, making the tea, running errands, typing letters, answering the phone, manning the switchboard, taking messages, photocopying and doing the mail.
I was paid a wage. That felt very grown up. My work DID have value to the company. They needed the skills they’d hired me for. I learned to type and do shorthand at school so I went in with a skillset but the idea my work was of no value because I had no experience whatever is absolute rubbish.
That’s like saying a cleaner is of no value because they’ve never done it before, which may well be the case with some who take cleaning jobs. Ditto carers. If you are carrying out essential tasks in an office, factory, shop, hospital or care home you are working. And you should be paid for it.
Young people need to stop accepting this “new normal” of having no worth. You bally well DO have worth. And you should be paid for it. Oh and stop with the false consciousness too. You should be on your own side, on your tribe’s side, not your employer’s. Or as Marx didn’t say, don’t let the bastards grind you down!
Absolutely. I got paid for my Saturday job when I was at school. Especially since I got my PhD, I’ve seen countless internships ask for much more – full-time work, postgraduate qualifications, previous experience in the role of the internship, other experience in the relevant sector… – yet offer no wages at all. All the more galling, people who walked into more challenging positions than they’re offering (where they were paid) say that their candidates aren’t capable and don’t deserve to be compensated for their labour. I support genuine volunteering, but I refuse to perform unpaid work.
Stockholm Syndrome is a great metaphor. Like hostages job seekers are powerless. They need experience that only the employer can provide. Perhaps it is a “normal” psychological response when you are one of millions searching for work to start to ape the beliefs of the employer in such a situation?
Yeah, Stockholm Syndrome is a huge factor, as is the survivorship bias of the few who succeed and want to believe they’re good rather than lucky.
@samarkeolog I’m really interested in the idea of a survivorship bias… Does anyone else think something like this is going on? It could help explain the attitudes of many fashion, PR and journalists who are surprisingly unsympathetic to unpaid interns, having done it themselves. If you’re one of the lucky ones, does it harden your heart to everyone behind you in the queue?
At least in public archaeology/cultural heritage, where an experienced postgraduate-qualified candidate’s chances of getting an apprenticeship can be 1-in-300, it’s impossible to pretend that it’s anything other than blind luck… but still people manage do do just that.
They even argue it publicly. Some recognise that the system ‘worked for [them]’, but many others convince themselves that the sector’s requirement of (and dependence on) mass unpaid labour is a ‘win-win‘ situation. (That isn’t the only example, it’s just the most obvious.)
Especially because the socio-economic mix of unpaid interns is so limited (70% middle-class white women who haven’t required income support?), they look around and see themselves and their success is naturalised.
More awkwardly, I think some of it is less a false belief in meritocracy, more a deliberate attempt to head off a movement for change that would threaten their position.
I believe Lauren to be neither traitor or victim, just another graduate expressing an opinion. I agree that graduates/students should be paid for internships but I also think that most don’t have the relevant skills to enter graduate jobs. If you have spent three years at university but still haven’t developed good critical thinking and writing skills, how are you expected to get a job? As an academic caseworker, I see so many students who don’t have these basic skills and it’s hard to imagine that they will end up in a decent job. A degree does give most people a sense of entitlement but most don’t have half the skills normally associated with a graduate. When taking an unpaid internship the individual should assess the value because as we know time is expensive.
Individuals allow themselves to feel undervalued because they see themselves as commodities. You shouldn’t be able to put a price on passion. If you love something you will do it regardless if someone pays you or not. I believe that only the passionate and skilled graduate will find work in the end.
http://www.thegraduate21.com
Oh dear, oh dear, oh dear. Here is a woman who recieved unfair treatment at the hands of her employer and has decided as a result to victimise the rest of her peer group. Frankly, I think that her views are shortsighted and childish, because all of a sudden, she has gained a sense of self importance because she has ‘made’ it, and so all of a sudden, she couldn’t possibly associated with the rest of the modern graduate generation.
I’m sure her internship was rough, but whilst she was sat at home with the heating on, direct debited straight to Daddy’s account, she probably didnt give a second thought to those who cannot afford to get a “foot in the door”: perhaps if she had had to work a full time job as well as her internship to support herself as well as working that precious unpaid internship, her views would be considerably different, because all labour has a value- someone has to serve your Starbucks, and somebody had to man the twenty four hour library she so dutifully lived in for most of her university career.
Maybe, she should have left her library, gone out on that rich and plentiful allowance and gained some perspective. Maybe she ought to have mingled with those damn kids, who saw the value in going outside and speaking to people, who had to eat kilos of pasta because there was no such thing as an allowance and who went out and made friend with their peers.
And for all her self righteousness, no matter how hard she thinks her university career was, that is nothing compared to how hard it is to provide for yourself, and your family, whilst arrogant, short sighted individuals such as Lauren continue to devalue the graduate labour market, detracting from the aim of employability departments that attempt to improve graduate employability, trying to bridge the gap between industry and HE. The elitist era should be over, and we should be reaching an all time high of social mobility, but instead, babble such as this is published.
Lauren- go outside, perhaps find a hobby. Do something instead of sit at home and complain about how hard done by you are. Appreciate how lucky you are, but do not ever condemn anyone else because they made a separate choice to you. Things tend to bite you on the ass when you do that… whats the saying? “The bigger they are, the harder they fall”… look out, the bloody working classes might knock you off you self imposed pedestal.
I suggest Lauren pulls her head from her rear and looks around. She js a disgusting individual, with a total
You work hard and have done all your life and that is comendable.
not everyone has the attention span, the function to deal with open thinking or the ability to regergatate information as you do, working hard is in all of us.
People feal quite rightly they should be paid its only right in a global economy which only supports life if you have money not to much to ask for.
You have contacts, your hard work and geography has enabled you to become heard in a very chanelled environment, if you look around you maybe you will notice something
We are educated in an industrial education system
Our parents are the last generation of the industrial age
They install us with a hard work mentality, getting grades, getting a job, getting a house all that sort of shit
Now look at the monetary system and how we have money
Then look at the industrial model the planet lives by
Look at what technology does for human living
Now look at what money can buy
Belive me if you truely want to have an opinion about how people live and the decisions they make and why
You have to go out and meet them
You are young which means you worry about things older people dont
Where you are born and the traditions you hold dear
Having a child
And many other things which give vary to peoples desicions.
If you put the two together you soon realise some very un nerving conclusions this world you paint with a large void of fulfilment ever trying to prove your ability for the pride you deserve
You are smart but you are uneducated you have obvious passion but maybe you should put that university research ability to better use
Find a man or woman (what ever floats your boat) go and see things, read, listen to music, widen your learning together and come back and have another crack
Good first effort though
@Alice93 and others:
I suppose the point that Lauren is making is if you have “too much fun” at uni (as opposed to investing time for work experience placements and things) you don’t develop enough experience to stand a decent chance of getting a job after uni. Sure, you can strike a balance between these things, but as has been said here, personally I regret not having more fun at university. I think university really is the last chance to enjoy things before the real pressure of adult life starts to set in. It’s supposed to be the best three years of your life. Sure, I got the first that I so dearly wanted (and, for the record, I believe that this entitles me to absolutely nothing), but now my biggest regret is not enjoying it enough.
I find it quite sad that Lauren thinks this way about her own generation, and I agree that this is probably the result of this unpaid internship culture that we are finding so hard to rid ourselves of, so I think it is probably a bit extreme to use the word traitor but rather a victim. The fact that we are now hearing this sort of thing from other graduates as well as older generations is discouraging to say the least. I just don’t get what is so difficult to understand about the fact that if you are doing work, you are entitled to at least the National Minimum Wage. It’s the law! If you don’t get paid at all, it makes you believe that your work has no value, and you end up with some people tarring everyone with the same brush.
I really hate it as well when people say that the experience of an unpaid internship is worth it. Like Tanya says in her book, can you buy food and drink with experience, or pay your rent with it? I have yet to find a landlord or a supermarket that accepts experience as a valid form of payment. People can’t just live with their parents forever and depend on them for everything, and besides, how many parents are willing to provide for their kids indefinitely well into adulthood? There is a different article on Graduate Fog somewhere that poses the question “Do you feel bad accepting money from your parents?” and the comments on it prove that not everybody is so lucky in this respect.
I was not ready for university, I have low esteeem. What about ethnic minorities, foreign nationals, people with conditions such as AD(H)D, dyspraxia, dyslexia, aspergers/autism/ASD/asperger syndrome etc, mental health problems, people who had difficult school experiences.
I think it will be a real shame if university just becomes a boot-camp for getting an office job but I can see it going that way. Young people seem to be taking things almost too seriously and it will be sad if universities have less student societies and events on campus because everyone is spending every spare minute studying.
For me university was time to broaden my mind, meet people from different parts of the world and experience new things. You’ve got the rest of your adult life to be miserable and overworked but the life enriching experiences you get at university can be hard to come by during your working life.
More like Stockholm syndrome surely, combined with infuriating smugness? And incitement to violate minimum wage law.
“Many stumble through university, developing little else than active social lives”
That’s true, but has no necessary correlation to how they do after uni.
Many of the more successful people on my course could be described as the above – though in many cases there’s no way in hell they’d be where they are without the Bank of Mum and Dad paying their rent whilst they did endless unpaid internships all over the place.
Indeed, it’s not much of an exaggeration to say that learning social dynamics, how to deal with people, networking, office politics etc is surely more important in many jobs (and in getting jobs in the first place) these days that actually having much idea what you’re doing? 😉