Unpaid internships often include menial work, career services expert says

Since the Department of Labor released new standards for internships last year, companies offierng unpaid internships have been criticized for working interns as if they were paid employees. While the department has focused on preventing employers from using students for free labor, students said they are more concerned with finding internships that hold educational and experiential value.

The Department of Labor requires that an internship must involve work that is “similar to what would be given in a vocational school or academic educational instruction.” For unpaid internships, “the employer and the trainees understand that the trainees are not entitled to wages for the time spent in training,” according to the report released in January of 2010.

Howard Howell, director of job placement for the Boston University English department, said the undergraduate students he assists have complained that only internships with menial work are available.

“I’ve had students that are interested in the music business, and then they see a job

advertised for that,” Howell said. “They can tell after an interview that the job is just entirely making copies instead of doing the cool stuff they’d hoped to do.”

Federal and state labor officials have found several violations of internships, especially those regarding unpaid internships, according to an April 12 article in The New York Times.

Interns were told to lift boxes, make copies, or in the case of one New York University student, wipe the door handles to reduce the risk of contracting swine flu among employees.

“The complaints I see on LinkedIn [about internships] are numerous,” said Joyce Rogers, director of the College of Communication Career Services. Most complaints she sees, however, do not come from students studying communication.

“It’s usually management, engineering, and also liberal arts students,” Rogers          said. “Sometimes it’s because liberal arts students [for example] are not sure of what they want to do. Some of their internship descriptions might sound a bit vague, and they end up doing menial work.”

College of Arts and Sciences senior Frank Ren, president of the BU Pre-Law Society, said he was “extremely lucky” in securing internships that gave him hands-on experiences with court cases and legislation.

“Of course there will be ‘legal’ internships where you will be signing paperwork and filing contracts, which is why I [stress] the importance of finding internships that offer exciting work,” Ren said.

“Law schools want to see that you have done work in your spare time that excites and interests you, e.g. working during a summer as a volunteer to help teach English to local children,” Ren said.

COM freshman Drew Hartman said his summer internship at the Suffolk County District Attorney’s Office in the Economic Crimes Bureau last year involved some “busy work,” such as filing mortgage claims, placing the claims online and preparing legal documents. However, he said he still spent a lot of time in the courtroom.

“Although it would be great to have more hands-on experience, I wouldn’t necessarily expect it, being an 18-year-old freshman an college that is an unpaid intern,” Hartman said.

COM senior Lexie O’Connor, who has completed four internships throughout her undergraduate career, said she did not work with a BU alumnus but still used the resources provided by COM Career Services.

After performing what seemed educational but less important work at a radio station, she said she decided to concentrate on a smaller media market to find internships that would provide the most hands-on experience.

“To me, most broadcast journalism internships are unpaid, but I babysat and waitressed on the side,” O’Connor said. “You can’t graduate without having done an internship, or even multiple internships.”