Essay On Unpaid Internships

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One thing that comes along in almost every college kid’s career at school or universities is to complete an internship as a part of their degree path. Internships are often seen as an essential for allowing students to get real world experiences and even possibly getting their foot in the door at a future employer. But at what cost? According to a 2013 study 47.8% of internships in the United States were unpaid and around 1 million unpaid internships were offered annually . By 2011, 1 in 2 students graduating with internship experience had not been paid for their work . Most of the time students are paying their schools to do unpaid work and with credit hours costing hundred of dollars per credit it can be costly for students to maintain a …show more content…

In order to survive in the world, people need to be able to earn money from the work they put in. Should interns be paid for the work they put in with these companies? Often internships are taken for a few months at a time and depending on how many hours students put in at their internships, they may not have time to earn extra income on the side while working for free. Technically most are not working for free; they are paying their school for the internship so they can earn academic credit. On the other hand, there examples of notable people in the film industry who have gained beneficial knowledge from unpaid internships and got their foot in the Hollywood door. One example is Jonas Rivera, who is known for his producing role in the animated film Inside and Out. Rivera was a student at San Francisco State University when he contacted Pixar to ask about a job. That led to his unpaid internship to work on Toy Story as well as cementing his career path in the company from intern, to production assistant, to production manager, to producer . So there is no doubt that interns have benefited from unpaid internships, but one thing we will never know is what Rivera’s situation was and how he was able afford the cost of living while working for Pixar unpaid. What did he have to sacrifice in order to balance working for free at Pixar and maintaining a

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