By Anna Hultz
Money is fun, money is also important. In college, people usually take an internship to graduate, and this can be done in many ways. But all of them are done either paid or unpaid. Internships offer a unique opportunity to gain valuable work experience and skills in a real-world setting.
“Internships are pretty in between. They could be bad, but they could also be great. It is up to the person to find the perfect one that suits them.”
Oscar Jones, ONU JUNIOR
Oscar Jones is a junior at Olivet Nazarene University who is currently serving an internship for College Church of the Nazarene. To see the currently available internships in the communication department, you can find out about them here.
Paid
There are many pros for a paid internship, one being that you get paid for the work that you do. As college students, many of us do not have jobs while we are going to school, meaning that we have no income. By offering pay, the internships make it possible for students to get experience without having to worry about their finances. This can help lead to higher levels of job satisfaction and a better likelihood that the intern will stay with the company after the internship is done.
According to the Journal for Education and Business, the authors, Gary Blau and Andrea Lopez said it is more than twice as likely for students to have a paid internship rather than an unpaid one. It is important to understand that paid internships should not be used to exploit cheap labor.
Interns should have work that relates to their field of study, and they should be given opportunities to learn and grow through the company. Paid internships need to be viewed as a way for companies to invest in the future by providing opportunities for the next generation of professionals. If you would like to know more about the importance of internships, you can learn more about them here.
Unpaid
One of the main arguments for unpaid internships is that they provide students with valuable work experience and training. For many college students, internships are essential to securing a full-time job. Unpaid internships are often sought out by those who can afford to work for free, for example, people with financial support from their families or access to scholarships. Some people believe that unpaid internships are a form of free labor while the organization benefits from the interns’ work.
The authors of The Unpaid Internship: Benefits, Drawbacks, and Legal Issues found that, “According to 79% of respondents in the aforementioned survey, completing an unpaid internship has a positive impact on a prospective employee’s chances of being hired, beating out volunteer work, employment in an unrelated field, and enrollment in a graduate or certification program.”
An informal survey was performed on campus at ONU. 100 people were asked if they took a paid internship or an unpaid internship and 46 of the 100 answered unpaid.
Internships help students all over the world to get a good full-time job. Like Jones said, people have to find their perfect internship for their circumstances.
