All the world's a stage. Internship required.

In the movie Today's Special, Aasif Mandvi's character is all set to go to France and work with a leading chef as a stage.  I got what stage meant because, in explaining to his father, the character made sure that idiots like me would also understand that French word--unpaid apprenticeship.

Or, as we refer to it in the world that I am familiar with, internship.

If ever students approach me with questions career planning, I tell them that starting with the summer after their second year of college they need to gain career experiences via internships.

But then it is a rare student who ever talks with me about those issues.  After all, I am a faculty who dishes out practical feedback, often via questions such as "why do you want to go to graduate school?" or "sure, the part-time job as a bouncer is fun now, but what about the longer term?"  I don't tell them "of course, you can do whatever you want" but instead remind them about the costs and benefits of their choices.

For the vast numbers who are not at elite universities, and even for some of those at the prestigious schools, internships are integral to landing that first full-time job.

One reason is a far larger graduate labour pool. In 1970 one in ten Americans over 25 had a bachelor’s degree; now a third do. That means jobseekers need an edge.

Yes, you see how this ties in to one of my favorite rants about the overproduction of college graduates, which in turn makes the diploma itself worthless, and drives up the importance of internships?  Ah, the complicated webs we weave into which the gullible youth are trapped!

Colleges and universities are often eager to promote internship for academic credit, but for the wrong reasons:

Another motive for American colleges and universities is that 90% offer academic credit for work placements, sometimes during term time. A growing number make an internship a condition of graduating for at least some courses. And students usually continue to pay fees while doing them. “For universities it’s really cheap money,” says Gina Neff, a professor of communication at the University of Washington. “They are getting tuition dollars and not having to spend instructional dollars.”

It is one heck of a racket!

If the higher education business can try to make a quick buck or two capitalizing on the internship, you think businesses that are out to make a buck or two will let the opportunity slide?

Perhaps not coincidentally, the number of unpaid internships has grown just as hiring has become riskier, pricier and more complex. In recent years anti-discrimination and unfair-dismissal rules have been tightened, and minimum wages raised, in many rich countries. The growing cost of benefits such as pensions, health care and maternity leave makes employees more expensive. Interns have therefore become an appealing alternative.

Think about it: Who is then watching out for the youth?

Decades ago, before the college-for-all mania, except in the creative arts professions, internships were meaningful and they paid.  Even when I was in graduate school.  In the creative arts professions like in the entertainment or fashion industry, well, abuse was the typical payment interns received.

This being America, where there is always somebody waiting to monetize anything, yes, there are agencies that promise students that they will get internships--for a fee.  If the price is right, then you too can become an intern!

Internships can even be bought. Washington has several organisations which promise to get students an internship for a fee. The largest is the Washington Centre, which has placed nearly 50,000 interns since 1975. It charges $6,200 for procuring a ten-week summer position (and offers housing for an extra $4,350). It says it has placed clients at the Treasury, the State Department and the White House. Dream Careers says it has sold more than 13,000 internships in firms from Standard & Poor’s to Moschino. Fees for its eight-week internships, including housing, start at $8,000.

All the world's a stage!

I don't get paid for writing. I should sue somebody. Anybody!

I understood early on that it won't be easy, if even possible, to monetize my professional interests and expertise (if any.)  At dinner table conversations, I freely share my "asset" but will have to pay for the consultation with an attorney or physician at the same table.  That is how the world operates.

Thus, when I started writing op-eds, I knew I was giving it away for nothing.  After spending my time, and a little bit of my money, in formally educating myself, I was then spending 45 to 60 minutes to write an op-ed for which I would not get paid anything.  Yet, that is exactly what I chose to do.  Which is why it was one heck of a pleasant surprise when a few years ago the editor at the Register Guard offered to compensate me with a honorarium that might just about pay for dinner for two.  A huge bonus!

There are plenty of reasons why we engage in such writing that does not pay.  At least, in my case, I have a day job that takes care of my expenses.  What about those who like to engage in interests similar to mine, are even more qualified and able than I am, but do not have a regular job?  The web is simply killing their abilities to sell words, leading to this NY Times op-ed with a catchy lead of "Slaves of the internet, unite!"  While it was never easy to have a lucrative career as a professional writer, the internet has certainly made it even tougher for writers to sell their work when so much is being written for free.

Ta-Nehisi Coates writes recalling his own experiences and notes this about the "exposure" element:

ask yourself how often you've seen writers/thinkers/historians/intellectuals etc. in online "conversation." Ask yourself how often you've seen guest-bloggers at sites like The Daily Dish. Do you believe these people to be paid? Do you believe them to not actually be doing work? Tomorrow I will go on television, a prospect that I try (lately unsuccessfully) to avoid. I try to avoid it because it is work. I have to prepare information that I hope to provide. I have to think about what I'm saying. I have to make sure I know what I'm talking about. I have to tell my nervous self to shut up. No one pays me--or any other guests--for these contributions. We work "for exposure."

One simply cannot buy this "exposure" but has to earn it.  Tongue-in-cheek, a colleague commented that I might just about be the most well known academic up and down the Willamette Valley--because of this "exposure" for which I have worked for free.

In a way, it is also this working for free, for exposure, that is behind the idea of internships.  Students provide their time and work for free, or at best for low compensation, knowing that the exposure would pay off.  When I worked as a planner, our agency routinely hired interns.  Private companies hired interns.  Everybody did that.  Some even paid their interns.

Of course, as with anything, here too there were organizations that abused this system--they sucked the energy out of their interns, by essentially treating them like full-time staff without paying them like full-time staff.  Which then led to a law on internships.

As Charles Dickens expressed via the Mr. Bumble character in Oliver Twist, "the law is a ass, a idiot."  It generates all kinds of unintended consequences.  Internship opportunities quickly evaporated.  At public and private agencies alike.  After all, it is easy to comply with the law by not offering internships at all, than it is to make sure that the internship program conforms to the letter of the law.

The latest in this:

Condé Nast, the globally renowned media publisher that produces magazines like Glamour, The New Yorker, and Wired, announced late last month that it will no longer offer its internship program.

Why?

The decision comes in response to a lawsuit filed by two former interns, Lauren Ballinger and Matthew Leib; in June, the interns sued Condé Nast for months of backpay, alleging that the publisher violated federal and state labor laws.

Reason adds this:

Condé Nast is the first major firm to eliminate its internship program since the flurry of unpaid intern lawsuits sprung up this summer. However, lawyers and employers are predicting that many firms may start to cut their programs - or offer just a few paid positions instead of many unpaid ones. So despite advocates' desire to open doors for struggling students, it seems the "Great Unpaid-Intern Uprising" may result in employers closing off opportunities altogether. 

Again, "the law is a ass, a idiot."

Meanwhile, this essay in the Chronicle of Higher Education argues that academics should not write for free.  Ahem, the author has not read Chekov's Uncle Vanya, which I quoted in my essay on academics and research--more than a decade ago--in the Chronicle of Higher Education.  If they know what they are getting, people will not part with their money in order to buy an academic's writings!

I will continue on with my writing for which I don't get paid.  But, hey, if you want to pay me, I am all for it ;)