When will today’s graduates get a break?  They pay for their degrees, then they have to work for little or no pay to get ‘experience’ for their CVs.  And now Westminster School is apparently going to auction an internship in a merchant bank to raise money for the school!

An article on The Conversation website by Kate Purcell, Emeritus Professor , Institute for Employment Research at University of Warwick suggests that the line between work and study has become increasingly blurred as students are expected to gain work experience throughout, and after their courses.  She tracked a large national cohort of UK students from application in 2005-6 until 2012, and found that about 80% had some work experience by the time they had finished their studies.  And it makes a difference what you study – the mathematicians were the least likely to have done unpaid work, and those in art and design and social studies and law were the most likely.  And it was those with the most advantages who were the most likely to have taken unpaid opportunties.

Of course, we at Pod Academy are not immune from this – we are a start up-charity, with very little money, and we use interns a lot.  It is a difficult issue all round.

Last week’s podcast on Pod Academy suggested that many young people are slipping into the precariat, those precarious workers who move from temporary job to temporary job – internships are meant to prevent that, but they can become part of the problem, as graduates do intership after unpaid internship.

What do you think?

Tags: Internships