Many people think that unpaid internships are a good thing.  That’s to be expected with any cultural norm, as was once slavery, women’s suffrage and black segregation. Internships are indeed an American institution, rooted not just in decades of evolution, among which exists a culture of free labor, but also in centuries of Apprenticeship and its role as a foundation for individual prosperity and our collective economic vitality.

In a perfect world – at the micro-economic level – [unpaid] internships can be a very good thing. But they are not all created equal.  However, in the big picture, – at the macroeconomic level – they become extremely detrimental.How?

“The Case for Intern Compensation” directly correlates with a number of interrelated issues including – but not limited to – college affordability and accessibility; graduate conversion rates and matriculation duration; equal opportunity employment and social stratification; the reduced accessibility to adequate student loans and the related immediate and long-term debt burden; and abusive practices by businesses to leverage free labor as an alternative to what might otherwise be paid job opportunities for unemployed workers. So this issue impacts a much greater “Internship Eco-System” and diminishes our ability to harness the full power of internships to fulfill the promise of American Youth to revitalize our economy and America’s global competitiveness.

We address all of these issues and more in our Intern Bill of Rights and Proposed Reforms, published at PayInterns.com Whether here or there, I’d love to hear what you think!