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Unpaid internships are old news. Introducing... buying internships

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whatsinaname

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Unpaid internships are already shitty (I was forced to do one for a grade at uni). This just takes it to the next level.

http://www.badscience.net/2013/05/w...v-points-internship-at-imperial-college-grim/

http://imperial.tab.co.uk/2013/05/14/buy-an-internship-in-a-research-group/

6th form Students at Wesminster School currently have the opportunity to buy an internship (link has now expired) in a research group in the Institute of Biomedical Engineering.
The school, which charges upwards of £7,236 per term to attend without a scholarship, is raising money; with items for the auction being donated by Parents, Former Parents, Old Westminsters and Friends of the School.
One of these items is a week long internship with a research group in the Institute of Biomedical Engineering, which is currently fetching a price of £252. This seems to go against Imperial’s offical outreach policy of “raising the aspirations of all students, regardless of background, to fulfill their potential and apply to the right university for them.”
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After all the furore online, the institute has cancelled the offer but other intership auctions are still open.

http://auction.westminster.org.uk/lots/category/Professional

Here's another one from the UN.

www.charitybuzz.com/catalog_items/337473?ref=org

“Take advantage of this exclusive opportunity for a 6-week internship in NYC working for Bruce Knotts, Chair of the UN-NGO Committee on Human Rights. You will gain inside knowledge of just how the UN really operates and have tremendous opportunities to make invaluable connections. This truly is the ultimate internship opportunity for any college or graduate student looking to get their foot in the door!”
Click to expand...
 
I used to tell our unpaid interns that they learn more from us than they ever will from a university, and we don't even charge. It looks like someone caught on to that logic, haha.
 
Internship reform needs to happen. But I doubt it will as long as Congress gets all the unpaid interns they want.
 
I think it's ridiculous not being paid at all, i mean fucking come on, im on an apprenticeship so I only get about £3 an hour, but it pays the bills just about
 
They are fund raisers, those internships may not even exist outside of these fund raiser auctions where these companies have been asked to contribute things towards it.

A week long period of work experience, which may not usually be available, is hardly an internship as it is.
 
I actually had the chance to do this kind of internship (as a political science student) but was put off by the ridicolous price. A friend of mine went to new york for the second time using this. It was a simulation of the workings of the UN, where various students impersonated the representatives from every country. Good for getting to know important people more than anything else.
 
GJS said:
They are fund raisers, those internships may not even exist outside of these fund raiser auctions where these companies have been asked to contribute things towards it.

A week long period of work experience, which may not usually be available, is hardly an internship as it is.
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That makes it even worse. People who can afford it are paying for a bullet point on their resume. And those points do make a difference on college applications.
 
It seems that everytime the working class, poor, and to a lesser extent the middle class find a way to get ahead its immediately shut down.

- Get a blue collar job? Jobs leave.

- Go to college? Too expensive and most non-difficult majors are pointless.

- Enroll in a difficult major? Major becomes more competitive and jobs start decreasing.

- Get an internship to gain work experience? You have to pay for them now.
 
What's concerning is these kids are already rich as fuck, and now they're buying themselves the experience to get into the best universities, rather than achieving anything through merit.

On the topic of the UN, their internships are complete bullshit. 6 months unpaid in somewhere like Zurich or New York, which means they're restricted to only the wealthy. Then, as the cherry on top, the UN itself doesn't recognise internships (including their own) as valid work experience, so good luck securing an entry-level position with them afterwards.
 
Computer said:
Why would you even buy an internship?
Click to expand...

“Take advantage of this exclusive opportunity for a 6-week internship in NYC working for Bruce Knotts, Chair of the UN-NGO Committee on Human Rights. You will gain inside knowledge of just how the UN really operates and have tremendous opportunities to make invaluable connections. This truly is the ultimate internship opportunity for any college or graduate student looking to get their foot in the door!”
 
At my uni I was hit really a massive desperation for an internship because without 60 days with an engineering company we weren't allowed to graduate. If you've been rejected by all the companies you've applied for, I can see how paying a little more to graduate on time would not seem half bad.

On the subject of unpaid internships, depends on the company I guess. I worked with a smaller software based engineering company ( and by small I mean 6 guys who were really good friends and really good at what they did) and they made it clear that the position was unpaid aside from maybe covering transport to get there. At the time I thought that as pretty generous as they were between projects but were still interested in helping me grab my mandatory days and teaching me enough programming to work on some cool stuff.

After that I ended up at a much larger, globally renowned company with a dedicated internship program that were paying graduate salary for the 2/3months it was running. Again I thought it was really generous.
 
So where does buying an internship fit into the "me me me generation" theory?

Paying to provide unpaid labour ... Reality and The Onion collide.
 
Disgusting stuff, well on the road (back) to indentured servitude and any other less invisible slavery that can be mustered.

Our "progress" over these past decades has been time and again shown to be truly hollow, fragile, and shallow.
 
I considered paying for an internship but i was broke as fuck. i did a shit tonne of unpaid internships and work experience and it lead to me getting the best internship a guy could ask for, which was also the longest and most well paid job i had.
 
I had to pay for my medschool intership under the pretence that it was two regular semesters. Fucking piece of shit, this is why im moving.
 
intern.jpg
 
lol I would laugh in their faces if they even suggested such a thing. The only acceptable thing in my book is internships that legitimately give useful experience for college credit.
 
Holy shit, next thing you know this'll be the norm and kids complaining they can't get a free internship (as in earning zero dollars) will be called the ME ME ME ME generation!

seriously, it boggles the mind how fucked up this is!
anybody fresh out of college, in over their head in debt as it is, and now not only do they have to work nights at the supermarket while earning "real" professional experience, they have to pay for that "privilege" too??

how is this even legal??
I hope the older generation remembers how they treated the younger one in 20 years or so, I have a feeling governmental reforms by then will not be too kind to the elderly...
 
ElectricBlue187 said:
This should not be legal, it's basically exploitation of the young.
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It's the market. Now that university degrees alone are kind of worthless and don't really set you apart (since they are usually too easy and don't teach a lot of skills that can be applied in the workforce), people need to go to work experience to demonstrate their potential value to an employer. If you did an internship in accounting, you're a lot more likely to be hired as an accountant later.

I'm honestly not sure how to fix this, aside from making university way harder than it is now and focusing on training them as much as you are educating them.
 
It's almost as if the most overly domesticated and virtual technocratic and severed and distracted generation(s) can easily be manipulated.

It's as if that was the whole point the entire time.
 
Mr. B Natural said:
It's almost as if the most overly domesticated and virtual technocratic and severed and distracted generation(s) can easily be manipulated.

It's as if that was the whole point the entire time.
Click to expand...

and all this time we feared the machines would be the enemy... damn don't I feel stupid now..
 
Glad all my chemistry/biochem internships were payed. Had to hustle to find them, though. Non-paid is a joke. Do more work than the people getting paid, yet get jack shit? I seem to recall such a practice existing not too long ago.
 
Mr. B Natural said:
It's almost as if the most overly domesticated and virtual technocratic and severed and distracted generation(s) can easily be manipulated.

It's as if that was the whole point the entire time.
Click to expand...

I've seen you post (short) thoughts of similar sentiments in the past and I take it you are not very happy with the state in which society is today to put it mildy. Could you expand on what do you consider to be the issues and what course of action can be taken to well, 'fix' things.
 
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