When he meets with a prospective employer in the near future, Matt Walsh will likely point to his experience this summer as a reason he should be hired.
The Amherst College senior is knocking on doors in several Valley communities, urging people to vote for Chelsea Kline in her state Senate bid. Walsh is attending campaign events on her behalf and otherwise lending a hand wherever needed.
Like many college and high school students, Walsh is doing this work not for money, but for the experience that he can one day point to when he tries to land a gig that pays.
“Nowadays, especially in liberal arts schools, you are constantly asked what practical experience you have, and I want to have the most possible when joining the job market,” Walsh told Gazette reporter Luis Fieldman, who was researching a story about unpaid internships.
Walsh is well on his way to checking off the internship box, though some universities and colleges are now advising students to seek at least two internships to show they are ready to join the job market.
But what does this internship experience look like? Done right, employers give students meaningful work and provide a modest amount of mentorship, but otherwise set them free to put their skills to work without a professor holding their hand.
An internship provides valuable experience for the student, opening a window into a profession without the commitment expected of full-time work. The experience can help a student reaffirm a belief in their chosen field, like Hanna Bredvik, a soon-to-be senior at Smith College who is spending part of her summer teaching creative writing to young children through the Northampton Center for the Arts. The experience has only affirmed her desire to pursue her interest as a creative writer.
Others, however, may use the internship experience to find that the profession isn’t for them.
For employers, an internship is a chance to provide a community service while also assessing a potential job candidate without the expensive commitment of a hire. About half of interns are offered a job by a company where they have interned, according to a 2017 survey by the National Association of Colleges and Employers.
There’s a downside to unpaid internships, however. For students who can afford them, the long-term benefit outweighs the lack of income during a few months of invaluable experience. Other students are not in a financial position to take on an unpaid internship, and the puts them at a disadvantage.
We applaud colleges that offer a stipend to students completing an unpaid internship at private companies or nonprofits. While Bredvik’s internship is unpaid, she receives a stipend from the Smith College Praxis Summer Internship Funding, which goes to roughly 400 undergraduate students each year. Stipend recipients must work a minimum of 220 hours and at least 5.5 weeks. In exchange, the program pays them $3,000 for work inside the United States, and $4,000 for work abroad.
The stipends are intended to support students as they “build on their academic studies, make decisions about their careers, and acquire the experiences and skills desired by employers and graduate schools.”
Bredvik said she still works 12-hour days when she is not at the arts center at child-care jobs in the area to supplement the stipend. She said she did not want to pursue a summer job that did not interest her and wanted to find work that would “resonate” with her.
According to the New York Times, Amherst College distributed $1 million in the summer of 2017 to help 229 students take unpaid internships with nonprofit organizations and small start-ups. Others colleges offer scholarships for internships. These are all valuable and should be expanded.
Walsh views his volunteer work as an investment in his future. His time with the Kline campaign has connected him with “great people I know in government and (I will) come out of this with skills I wouldn’t have otherwise, a payoff big time down the line with job qualifications.”
That’s a valuable take-away from a summer internship experience, and we commend all the businesses and nonprofits that offer those meaningful opportunities.