The Spire

Kimberly Von Randow ‘28

Staff Writer

There is something deeply wrong with a system that tells college students they need experience to get a job, then offers them experience in exchange for absolutely nothing. Apparently, exposure pays the rent now. Maybe networking covers groceries. And if I shake enough hands at the office, perhaps my student loans will simply disappear.

Unpaid internships are often sold as golden opportunities to inexperienced college students. They give you a chance to get your foot in the door, build a résumé, and make connections. But let’s call them what they are: a system that allows organizations to benefit from students’ labour without paying them for it. Put a blazer on exploitation, throw in a LinkedIn recommendation, and suddenly it’s called professional development instead of exploitation.

The argument in favor of unpaid internships is always the same. Students are learning, gaining experience, and investing in their futures. Fine. Learning matters. Experience matters. But so does the work students actually do. If an intern is researching, writing, answering emails, managing social media, assisting with projects, or doing the work of an entry-level employee, why should their contribution be worth precisely zero dollars?

Nobody would walk into a supermarket, fill a cart, and tell the cashier, “Don’t worry, this is a fantastic learning opportunity for you.” Yet somehow, when it comes to young people desperate to break into competitive industries, expecting free labor becomes perfectly acceptable.

The worst part is that unpaid internships don’t offer equal opportunities. They offer opportunities to those who can afford them.

A student whose parents can cover rent, food, transport, and bills might be able to spend the summer working for free at a prestigious company. Another student, equally talented and hardworking, might have to take a paid job in retail or hospitality just to keep their head above water. Neither student is necessarily more qualified than the other. One simply has the financial luxury of working without a salary.

Universities constantly encourage students to chase opportunities and gain experience before graduation. But what happens when those opportunities come with a price tag disguised as a paycheck of absolutely nothing? Students are effectively being asked to pay for the privilege of working. They sacrifice time they could spend earning money, studying, or simply trying to enjoy the brief period of their lives before adulthood arrives with a metaphorical invoice and, possibly, a recommendation letter.

And while employers benefit from enthusiastic, capable students, those students are left wondering whether professional ambition requires financial self-sacrifice. Apparently, getting ahead means being able to afford falling behind financially.

This is why the Crusader Internship Fund deserves genuine praise. By providing financial support to students who secure unpaid internships, the fund acknowledges a problem that institutions and employers too often ignore. But it cannot solve the entire problem, and it should not become an excuse for employers to continue offering unpaid positions. Organizations should pay people for productive work. The responsibility to fix exploitation belongs to employers, not universities scrambling to soften the financial damage.

Still, the Crusader Internship Fund is a meaningful step in the right direction. It gives students who might otherwise have to turn down an opportunity a better chance to participate. More importantly, it recognises that talent is everywhere, even if disposable income isn’t.

We should not have to feel grateful for the opportunity to work for free. And we certainly should not have to pretend that being unable to pay for necessities is a reasonable sacrifice for a line on a résumé.

Unpaid internships are not a rite of passage or character-building exercise. And they are certainly not an excuse to dress up free labor as a humiliating favor.

The Crusader Internship Fund helps students navigate a broken system. But let’s be clear: the ultimate goal should not be to make unpaid internships easier to survive. It should be to make them unnecessary.

Because if an organisation can afford to benefit from your work, it should be able to afford to pay you for it. And if the future of work depends on young people working for nothing, perhaps the future needs a performance review.