For many university students, completing an internship is not an unfamiliar experience. Whether as a course requirement or as a way to gain valuable career experience, students are willing to take on internships—often unpaid—to meet their goals.
According to a 2018 survey by the Canadian University Survey Consortium, 17 per cent of graduating students completed an internship experience, and 8 per cent of those were unpaid.
While some students benefit from unpaid internships, they can also create professional barriers for those who can’t afford to work for free—especially during COVID-19 when internship opportunities are more scarce.
SAhana Kapur is a fourth-year global and international studies student at Carleton. She completed an unpaid international internship requirement in Mumbai, India where she worked with Aastha Parivaar, an organization that focuses on empowering sex workers.
“I’m Indian but I’ve never been to India before, so that was a really big deal for me,” she said. “I thought it would be such a great opportunity.”
For Utibeabasi Emah, a 2019 political science and international relations Carleton graduate, it was a need for a change that inspired her to take an unpaid internship in New York City with Higher Heights for America—an organization that supports Black women in politics.
“I felt like I was dealing with so much anxiety leading to the internship that I just wanted to be out of the country,” Emah said.
Although both students said they benefited from their experiences, Emah and Kapur added they are concerned about unpaid internships.
Paying to work: The financial burden of internships
Kapur said unpaid internships can be exploitative. Even if students are treated unfairly by the employer, they have no choice to quit because they often need to complete the program requirement in order to graduate.
“I felt in some situations I was doing more work than the people that actually worked there,” Kapur said. “They got me to do a lot of things I should have been paid for, but in reality, I was paying them.”
Kapur said she paid an estimate of $3,000 to complete her internship in India.
Emah also said internships should be paid, especially when they are abroad.
In an email interview, she said it cost her $3,890 USD, along with $1,800 USD fees for rent, and $1,590 USD for her visa. While she was able to afford this opportunity, Emah said paid internships could be a significant help in covering the costs.
Emah explained that earning a paid internship abroad is a reassurance to your wallet, especially if you spent a lot of money on travel and accommodation.
“Even if you spend so much money before getting to where you’re going, the good thing about it is that there’s still money that you’re banking on when you get there,” she said.
Emah said her internship organization gave each of its interns $1,500 as a stipend. Although this amount didn’t cover all of the associated costs of taking on the position, she said it was still a relief.
“If they didn’t give me that money, I don’t know what I would have done,” Emah said.
She added companies who don’t intend to pay interns should provide them with other compensation, such as subsidized living costs.
“If you’re going to make my internship unpaid, then the incentives that should come with the internship or the benefits that should come with the internship should be so much,” she said.
Experience versus exploitation
According to Laura Horak, an associate film studies professor and former internship co-ordinator at Carleton, some companies in the arts sector don’t have the funding to offer paid internships, except through government programs such as Young Canada Works.
Horak said all labour should be paid, but an unpaid internship is acceptable “as long as it’s sort of functioning as true education and training and it is leading toward paid work.”
Horak also stressed the need for short, targeted unpaid internships to avoid exploitation.
“We don’t let students do more than one [unpaid internship] because at some point it’s like, you’ve learned what you’re there to learn, now you are trained and ready to get paid,” she said.
She encouraged students to apply for paid internships or work-study positions which are also offered by Carleton University.
Horak added her own experience as an intern gave her “a kind of underground experience of the precarity of artists doing important work.”
The bad and the ugly of pandemic internships
On top of the regular logistical considerations, securing an internship is even more difficult during COVID-19. In May, Statistics Canada reported over 35 per cent of students had a work placement cancelled or postponed due to the pandemic.
Daniel Crete, University of Ottawa human kinetics internship co-ordinator, said securing internships for his students this year was a challenge, as most of the organizations he typically deals with were not able to accept them.
“Early in the summer, there was so much uncertainty that our partners weren’t really able to commit until later on,” Crete said. “But we managed, everyone found something.”
Harry Scannell is a fourth-year global and international studies student at Carleton who was supposed to complete an unpaid marketing internship in Tokyo with CRCC Asia over the summer, but the internship was cancelled due to COVID-19.
Instead, he was offered a partial refund and a virtual internship with Yingke Law Firm, headquartered in Beijing, China.
“I was told at the time of signing up if it was to be cancelled, then I would be reimbursed in full,” he said. “The internship costs around $9,000 CAD and I received a refund of about $4,000 CAD.”
Scannell said he was unable to complete his internship because his supervisor stopped responding to him, which was problematic because Carleton’s global and international studies program requires an international experience in order to graduate.
When he voiced the communication issues, Scannell was told in an email that his Yingke Law Firm supervisors raised concerns over his responsiveness during the internship and suggested Scannell “may come across as having a negative attitude at work.”
Scannell said he thought the focus on his attitude deflected from bigger problems.
“I was working two jobs, so I had to finish the assignments late at night,” Scannell said. “I think they just said that to place the blame on me rather than them.”
Scannell’s graduating GPA suffered as a result of the low grade on his final assignment related to the internship.
He said he believes companies offering unpaid internships don’t have students’ best interests at heart.
“It’s a rip-off,” he said.
Positive takeaways and practical development
While they experienced challenges, both Kapur and Emah said their unpaid internships offered them valuable insights into possible future career paths.
Kapur said her internship in Mumbai changed her perspective on sex work and helped her develop new skills.
“My initial assumption of sex workers in India was all these young women who were forced into this industry, and a lot of the time that is the case,” she said. “But I wanted to learn more about it and I realized I was completely wrong.”
While working in the red-light district in Mumbai, Kapur said she witnessed part of the lives of sex workers in the city firsthand.
“I gained so much more respect for the sex work community,” she said.
In the organization where everyone spoke either Hindi or Punjabi—two languages Kapur does not understand—she said she learned to overcome the language barrier and connect with the people through general activities and even through food.
“Communication is so important, but it doesn’t necessarily have to be verbal all the time,” she said.
Kapur added she also believes her ability to respond to unique circumstances and adapt to a new environment improved over the course of the internship.
During her internship in New York, Emah said she gained a better understanding of the political sphere in the U.S. One of her tasks was electoral monitoring, where she kept track of how candidates interact with the public via social media.
She said the training she received in campaign organization and fundraising gave her a more realistic view of what a future career in the field would entail.
“After that, I was like, ‘Oh no, I don’t think I ever want to go into a political campaign,’ because it’s a lot of work,” Emah said.
She added developing skills such as time management, problem solving, and prioritization helped her enjoy the overall experience.
“You can get to a place like New York, and because there’s so much to do, you can get distracted,” she said.
Internship alternatives
Those who can’t afford to participate in internships—paid or unpaid—due to logistical barriers can take advantage of other more cost-effective ways of breaking into the workforce.
Samantha Gec, a fourth-year commerce student at Carleton, said she believes that internships are helpful, but developing soft skills such as a positive attitude are equally as valuable.
“It’s more of your own attitude that you bring to a job in your industry that counts—if you are willing to learn new skills or you are good with people,” Gec said. “Those are skills that can’t be matched by any sort of knowledge learned in school.”
Horak also said there are other ways to make connections in a field of interest, especially in a virtually-connected world.
“You can go to events, you can sign up for a mailing list or you can hang out on Facebook groups and chat with people,” she said.
While internships can help create meaningful industry connections, those who choose to avoid internships or cannot complete them can still maximize other areas of employability.
Featured graphic by Sara Mizannojehdehi.
