ESPOSITO: Internships must be made more accessible to all students
Column: Unapologetically
“When you know you are cut out for something and you know you are good enough for it but constantly are let down, it makes everything feel hopeless.”
I had the opportunity to go out to grab a cup of coffee with a junior the other day. We talked for a while about the stellar GPA she has maintained, the extracurriculars she has pursued and how much she has accomplished even in the middle of the ongoing pandemic.
With all of these extracurriculars and an impeccable academic record, she has yet to secure any internships. She is also the first member of her family to attend college. Both of her parents work low-income jobs, not related to her field.
She frets over graduating in a year and a half and worries that no one will hire her without any experience, despite her applying to internships. Though the coronavirus disease (COVID-19) pandemic has caused many internships to stop being offered if they are unable to go remote, this is not the main cause of students' struggle — it only intensifies it.
With so few internship opportunities during the pandemic, some are not based on the application alone but instead on networking. CNBC reports that upward of 80 percent of jobs are found through networking, and 70 percent are not even posted online.
In a time when everything is halted, internships and potential jobs can be scarce and based solely on who you know and your connections. This affects lower-income students the most. Many of them are first-generation college students, with little prior knowledge of the field they are going into.
Wealthier students, on the other hand, could have much more connections due to their parental background and what they can afford to do to get experience and network. Before the pandemic, Time Magazine reports that 60 percent of internships are unpaid. For the majority of fields, internships are a necessity to be considered by recruiters and to show you have experience before graduating.
But what if you cannot afford an unpaid job? What if your time is instead spent at a job that you need to pay for school, rent or groceries? It means that in the future, post-graduation, you will be passed up on for applicants with more experience.
Many students coming from low-income households have to work to get through college if they are covering costs themselves. If an internship is unpaid, it could be impossible for them to quit their job to work somewhere without any income.
We know how competitive the job market is. Without the necessary experience, it is the students who are able to afford unpaid internships who get the jobs after college. Alternatively, the students who have the means to know how to network and acquire internships that are not publicly advertised get the jobs — which leaves us with the same unlevel playing field we started with.
ProPublica says that currently more than half of students graduating college leave with internships — more than double what it was a decade ago. And with 60 percent of employers saying they look for students who had internships, people who do not have access to them or cannot afford unpaid internships are falling drastically behind.
COVID-19 only intensifies this widening gap between the rich and the poor. As internships become few and far between, it comes down to the people who can afford to be flexible versus the people who cannot. People surviving in a pandemic of minimum wage and stimulus checks cannot afford to drop everything for an unpaid internship, even if it will serve them well in the long run.
I told my friend to send in as many applications anywhere and everywhere she can. I also told her not to apply to unpaid internships. Until these hardships are addressed, generational wealth gaps will continue.
Laura Esposito is in the School of Arts and Sciences senior majoring in journalism and political science. Her column, "Unapologetically," runs on alternate Tuesdays.
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