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"It'll Cost You"? A Response to the Wall Street Journal

In response to the January 28 article by Ms. Shellenbarger on unpaid internships and paid placement services, it is encouraging to see the Journal bring attention to this matter and understandable that the coverage was one-sided to make an important point. 

Naturally, the OTHER side is that finding quality internships needn’t cost a dime.  And by “quality,” we take aim at businesses and organizations that are savvy enough to groom AND pay potential future employees for contributing real work value and productivity. 

In fact, we at The Internship Institute advocate that all interns should be paid and that no student should have to pay to gain practical work experience.

If it pleases your readers, I wish to cover four distinct points with brevity. First, the root of the problem at colleges; second, the crux of the issue at businesses; third, how students can find internships on their own, and; fourth, the remedy to these timely workforce gaps.

College career centers are – by and large – grossly under-funded and short-staffed (about a 1:1800 ratio by one study[1]). Less than half of students EVER visit their center.  Less than half of centers do anything directly to help students find internships. Hardly ANY career centers provide internship and job placement services.  Enough said.

Second, when it comes to internships, most businesses either don’t know what they’re missing, don’t know what they’re doing, or don’t have the tools to do it right. The real problem is with managers, the majority of whom have poor misconceptions about the value of having interns to increase efficiency, productivity and competency to save time, cost and mistakes. The first step is to dedicate time and effort to get proper training for supervising and mentoring students effectively.

As evident as internships are to some, they remain a huge ‘blind spot’ on the face of the American business community and education system. As a looming talent crisis increasingly becomes apparent and today’s workforce struggles to do more with less, internships represent an unprecedented opportunity to infuse the economy with an untapped pipeline of student talent. They also ready an emerging workforce to succeed, reducing the widening gap between labor and business competency. Managers can especially boost their productivity, gaining the equivalent of 200-plus workdays in a calendar year, through a properly managed internship program.

In fact, we’ve launched a federally funded (WIRED Grant) program in Northeastern Pennsylvania to promote and establish more quality internships. The “Internship Seeding Initiative” involves advanced training for managers, resources to simplify programs, and takes aim at productivity as the key driver for a mutually beneficial internship experience.

Moving on, there are a number of ways students can find paid internships for free so parents don’t have to buy it for them. Aside from the obvious, they will want to network through student chapters of their respective professional associations, contact their local chamber of commerce, and talk to classmates they know who had good internships and are willing to make an introduction. One outstanding way to secure opportunity is to do informational interviews by identifying and contacting the right individuals at select companies to ask if you can buy someone a cup of coffee. It is a “soft sell” that can pay huge dividends.

Career advice aside, let’s look at the big picture and how to solve this mess. It wasn’t entirely accurate for me to say that students shouldn’t pay for internships because the reality is that most of those who do them for credit have to pay for those too.  It’s interesting to wonder where that money goes when they’re not paying a full-time tenured professor or the facilities overhead for a classroom.  It’s time for colleges to evolve by right-purposing that revenue to provide students with relevant support.

The solution is to make every college junior earn three-credits for work experience and service learning internships and reallocate [or rebate] the tuition to fund and scale a universal, private network of Internship Readiness and Placement Centers on every college campus. This summarizes our Learning Experience Access Program (L.E.A.P.)[3].

Among many things, this network would complement career services offices by absorbing all internship and employer relations functions and personnel. Most centers do everything else anyway (i.e., résumés, interviewing, job fairs, etc.).  These LEAP Centers would spearhead ApprentiCorps, a program to create internships for non-profits and give students the opportunity to fulfill their graduation requirement.  It makes sense to match the need for helping hands with the need for hands-on experience and solve both. This letter only scratches the surface of our “College-to-Employment Vision and Action Plan.” 
Overall, internships represent a “triple threat” opportunity -- helping managers strapped for time, a workforce strapped for resources, and preparing the next generation of workers eager to make their mark.  Students can be their own ambassadors to the right opportunity without it costing a thing, except maybe some tuition credits.

I would love the opportunity to discuss these issues in greater detail and explore how we may shed more light on the deeper issues at hand.

Thank you for your consideration.

Sources:
[1] University of Michigan-Dearborn (Regional Career Center Study 2008)

[2] The Internship Institute Student Productivity Study (updated 2007).  See capsule at www.InternshipInstitute.org/paradigm.asp

[3] The Internship Institute College-to-Employment Vision and Action Plan www.InternshipInstitute.org/gapremedy.asp.

THE INTERNSHIP INSTITUTE RECEIVES FUNDING FOR NATIONAL PILOT PROGRAM TO REMEDY COLLEGE-to-EMPLOYMENT GAPS IN NORTHEASTERN PENNSYLVANIA

SCRANTON, PA – January 19, 2009 – Teach today's managers how to prepare tomorrow's graduates. That's the premise of the "Internship Seeding Initiative," an innovative national pilot program debuting today in Northeastern Pennsylvania thanks to a $375,000 federally-funded WIRED grant awarded to The Internship Institute (TII).  WIRED stands for Workforce Investment Regional Economic Development, a U.S. Department of Labor stimulus grant to apply best practices to some of today’s most pressing issues.

The remedy here is a program that’s designed to be replicated nationwide to – in effect – standardize and certify internship quality. The program will provide essential work experience, among many things, and a highly effective workforce to remedy the economic development gap.
NOTE: See our website for full details.

Under the WIRED grant, The Internship Seeding Initiative national pilot program will demonstrate that training managers to supervise and mentor students - coupled with best practice program development and ongoing student and employer helpdesk support - truly make internships matter.

Piloted in the 10-county footprint of Northeastern Pennsylvania, the Internship Seeding Initiative WIRED grant provides for paid internships for 50 students at 50 financial services and information technology companies in a ten-county region. Assisting The Internship Institute as a fiscal agent is the Northeastern Pennsylvania Technology Institute (NPTI).

The implementation will give employers every advantage to have a high performing internship program.  Programming begins with a synchronized multimedia training orientation for supervisors, mentors, HR professionals and organization heads. The session features viewing the best practices Blueprint DVD while reviewing the companion Internship Supervisor Guidebook and Mentoring Tutorial.  The 50 employer host sites also receive free access to the Z University online Internship Knowledge Center. The Knowledge Center features the highly acclaimed Internship eToolkit, a complete step-by-step system of internship best practices, time-saving templates, productivity assets, a student “essential skills training” module, hundreds of intern assignment ideas spanning 20+ professions, and intern project guides to help students do practical hands-on work.  More to come.

Matthew Zinman, founder of The Internship Institute and its Z University affiliate, proudly states, “We are most grateful for the opportunity to show what we can do. It’s been a lot of hard work and determination to get here. Now, thanks to Wall Street West and WIRED, we’re in a position to make the meaningful difference we set out to achieve.”

Internships play a critical role in shaping the workforce of the future. Their importance in the improvement of the talent pipeline in order to meet industry demands cannot be overstated. By improving on both the philosophy and administration behind internships, a system of collaboration is created that gives companies a leg-up in attracting the best talent in their industry. Additionally, much like many aspects of business, learning to be an excellent internship coordinator is a niche skill that, once perfected, can give a company an edge over its competitors.

A common thread that leads to a successful internship is one-on-one experience. In developing this curriculum, we at TII have learned that most managers can maximize their efficiency by simply re-purposing their time to manage and mentor. With this in mind, we have created a high impact, multimedia training program – customized specifically for supervisors – that takes aim at productivity as the key driver for a mutually beneficial internship experience.

“The Internship Institute joins more than 45 other organizations in Northeastern Pennsylvania who have received more than $10 million to create programs that focus on developing the skills for the next cycle of employment opportunities,” said Matt Connell, Chairman, Wall Street West Executive Committee. “Each funded program plays a role in the collective body of work that Wall Street West is creating, which will lead to the long-term success of Northeastern Pennsylvania’s workforce.”

Other components of TII's Internship Seeding Initiative include:

• The Internship Institute will promote education awareness campaigns and present its trademark Supervisor Orientation events throughout Northeastern Pennsylvania for all three academic terms in 2009. TII will make the best use of funding by utilizing large public venues and invite more employers and supervisors to participate.
• The Internship Supervisor Orientation is a unique multimedia experience for all managers and mentors to learn and fine-tune their intern and program management skills.  The proprietary training technique and content takes aim at intern productivity yield, student learning outcomes, and assuring an all-around mutually rewarding experience. These 90-minute interactive sessions feature TII's Supervisor and Mentoring Guidebook, which participants follow while viewing a synchronized best practices video. The purpose of this advanced training technique is to accommodate variable learning styles and reinforce the content that managers must put into practice.

About The Internship Institute

A Pennsylvania-based non-profit (est. 2005), The Internship Institute champions career experience as essential for college students to become workforce-ready. It is the non-profit affiliate of Z University, which together make internships a powerful remedy to close the gap between classroom learning and workplace ability. We lead with vision, innovation and action to create opportunity to benefit employers, students, educators and non-profits.

Our unique resources and training methodology effectively remove the barriers for employers to develop quality internship programs, for supervisors to gain the most value, for mentors to share a rewarding experience, and for students to do meaningful work that helps them earn gainful employment.

All told, The Internship Institute devotes its innovative vision, unwavering passion and steadfast determination to prepare the emerging workforce and assure that skilled labor keeps America globally competitive.

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What's the Deal with Unpaid Internships?

The Chronicle of Higher Education just posted a piece about the injustice of unpaid internships. 

It's always good to see this issue receive attention, but there are a number of aspects to unpaid internships that I simply fail to understand. So I've got a few questions of my own, such as:

1) How is it that most students are charged academic credits (90+% according to the UMD internship study) and yet they're unpaid BECAUSE they earn credits?  Isn't that double-penalizing them?

2) Why aren't higher ed institutions held accountable for where internship tuition credit funds go?  It's obviously not being put toward career centers, which often must operate on shoe-string budgets. (yes, I know many are decentralized and that department coordinators are compensated, etc. but really ... )

3) Why, if the students are supposed to be doing "real work" are unpaid internships an exception to the minimum wage law?  Don't they also tend to devalue students among supervisors who then fail to provide the best experience?

WHY DO SOME SCHOOLS WITH CREDIT INTERNSHIPS DICTATE THAT STUDENTS SHOULDN’T BE PAID????

4) Per the focus of The Chronicle piece, it's obvious that unpaid internships create an socioeconomic divide in places like Manhattan and DC? Why is this modern injustice accepted? What can we collectively do? (the author has some good suggestions).

5) Why are we keeping our emerging workforce poor?  It makes no economic sense.

6) Why do institutions bend over backwards to accommodate businesses that don't pay students (ie. "zero-based" credit waivers - which seem to be GAINING favor!)

7) Why aren't NACE, NSEE, CEIA and the regionals doing anything to advocate change? If not them, who would?

Sorry, I'm a little feisty today.  Hope you don't mind a friendly debate.

A Fresh Perspective

I'm always the first to say what I know and what I don't. Since publishing on 2/29, I've had the opportunity to gain perspectives from many friends and colleagues - particularly in career services.  Needless to say, the Internship LEAP would be a colossal task.

The LEAP initiative is true to our core mission to close the gap between school and work with internships as THE solution to improve workforce readiness and "right-careering" college students. Most everyone with whom I've spoken agrees that it's a good idea to create a network of internship centers to interface with employers and charitable community organizations (ApprentiCorps). These centers would be all about best practices - which would require thorough research.

For example, freshman year could involve tying into admissions to centralize records and doing an intake. Student sophomores would take prep courses, Juniors would intern, then reflect. Seniors would adapt to their interests accordingly.

As stated, the core purpose here is to be a conduit and seamlessly integregrate on campuses. Imagine an Internship Readiness and Placement Center with student work stations to create flexibility to do virtual internships for employer or even departments on campus. The possibilities are far and wide.

What do you think?  Again, this exercise is about creating the ideal solution with complete disregard to obvious the hurdles.  More to come.

On Leap Day: Intern Guru Closes Gap Between School and Work

CLICK IMAGE BELOW TO ENLARGE!
DOWNLOAD FULL SIZE IMAGE HERE! (pdf) 

INTERNSHIPS on LEAP DAY 2008

A Vision of the Way Things Are Supposed to Be

By Matthew Zinman
Founder, The Internship Institute

Today's the day. An opportunity. THE opportunity.

If you've ever wondered how things got to be THIS way, let's LEAP the other direction to our future and wonder instead about how things are supposed to be. 

Here are the Four New Realities About Internships:
    1) MANDATORY to graduate
    2) FAIR PAY for everyone
    3) CENTRALIZED on campuses
    4) SELF FUNDED by students

Every time we change something, it always ripples to another; which is to say: there are objections to remedy.  For now, please refer to this vision chart.  Everything will become clear and happen, all in due time. 

In short, I will appeal to every college and university and, if I have to -- students and parents -- to create a fund using 1.5 credits of students' (and parents) hard-earned tuition money (and loans) to privatize a system of Employment Readiness and Career/Internship Placement Centers on campuses everywhere to "plug in" to the employer community and seamlessly integrate into how each school does it.

Thank you for all your kindness and support.  We need all we can get to make this work.

Happy Leap Day!

Matthew

 

Students Pay Tuition for Internship Credits; Ever Wonder Where the Money Goes?

A recent study by the University of Michigan-Dearborn elicits curiosity about something beyond its purpose.

UMD surveyed career centers at 64 institutions to address student needs for employment preparedness.  They evaluated various methodologies (and lack there of) for implementing a successful experiential learning program.  The work is ground-breaking by its own merits. (Nice goin' UMD!)  What's more is a cross-reference of data, which reveals the following;

1) Students can earn on average up to 6 internship credits within their major

2) More than 90% of schools charge students tuition for "recoupment of the cost of administrative and educational oversight"

3) However, ONLY 22% of career centers were classified as "high-touch" (see footnote)

This begs a very interesting question:  Where's the money going that universities charge students for internship credits?  And how much money is that?

Career Centers Get the Short End, Students Get the Shaft

I’ve experienced way too little about how career centers and universities operate. Every campus I come across seems to do things differently. One commonality I fail to understand is why career centers run on shoe-string budgets. The latest news from NACE (National Association of Colleges and Employers) is that the average amount that four-year colleges and universities allot for career services per student is about $10 whole bucks.

Let me get this straight. The annual cost of education these days [according to the College Board] at a four-year public institution of higher learning is about $6,185 for public institutions and $23,712 for private schools. So, out of all that tuition, only $10.53 [to be exact] trickles back to students in the form of career services? Can that be right?

Actually, I think less than half of students ever utilize career services and less than half of career centers have services of direct benefit to internships. Now we’re getting somewhere.  What’s more is that my sources tell me the NACE study is flawed because it does not account for the full operating budget, most of which is staff compensation. And we all know the good work of career centers is about its people. They’ve got plenty. What more could they want? Don’t they bring in tons of other money without having to rely so much on institutional funding? Let’s imagine we could double their funding to average about $20 per student. Would they even know what to do with all that cash?

I’ve got it. They can hand out free sticks of gum to every student they can interest in taking a photocopy of that résumé guide. There you have it. Problem solved. Good thing too, ‘cause now universities can go back to their true priorities: giving faculty more incentives to publish instead of teaching better.

Can you point me to the Employment Readiness Center on campus?

Hey, do you know where I can find the Employment Readiness Center?  It's like - a campus hub.  Truly unbelievable.  All of those professionals are so good at helping students connect with the right internships and job opportunities.  I guess their job's easy now with the experiential education requirement in effect.  Every student has to complete an intake assessment for the data to go right into the master registry.  So now, every time an employer calls to recruit students, the employment center professional is just a few keystrokes away from matching up dozens of candidates.

And then we woke up.  Okay, I'll speak for myself.  Just a daydream I guess.

I know.  I know.  Someone out there's thinking if THAT is what this guy fantasizes about; it might be time for him to get a life.  I'm trying my best people.  How 'bout you?  What's your dream sequence for the perfect career center?  Let's get this party started.  it begins ... you're BMOC (or "W"): the prez.  You can do anything to improve work readiness and, dare I say, STUDENT PLACEMENT.  What say you?