Internships are a major component to college success and future career opportunities. They are the ideal way to gain experience in any field and great to put on your resume. Also, they are a sufficient way for most companies to get away with slave labor.

Yes, you read that correctly.

Think of the typical "go get me coffee" internship experiences, or the amount of times someone has mentioned that they made "copies and scanned files and made phone calls" for their internship. These kinds of duties are the new wave of peasantry in a business office.

Now think about the internships you've had.

I'm sure your boss does not even consult you for assignments needed to be done. I'm sure you had hesitated going to their office every few minutes, wanting to beg for something else to do.

When you are steered away from one petty task to do another petty task, that's how you know you are most definitely being exploited.

On top of it all, they aren't paying you. They can afford to pay for staff associates to hang around with walkie talkies all day, who should otherwise be assisting guests who enter the facilities, and the bank teller who counts cash, deposits and cashes checks, or signs papers all day. But they cannot afford to pay the finance intern, who is upstairs in the administrative offices surrounded by six-figure-salary workers, who audits their financial statements and writes their legal documents before the real auditors come in to make sure there is no fraud going around within the company.

No, that doesn't sound like a person worth paying at all...

They aren't even paying for your transportation. Maybe $75 in tolls is refunded, but what if you live in Bayonne and your internship is in Paramus? You will be paying $5.15 in turnpike tolls and 10 miles of gas plus the return trip. How much is your weekly gas consumption costing you? Add the amount of times that gas was wasted just from sitting in traffic (especially if you were taking NJ-17). Within the first eight days of your internship, you would already have spent $82.40 in tolls. Your reimbursement amount is only $75. On top of that, you still have another three months and 20 days to go before the end of your internship (if it's a four-month internship, which most are).

And if you still think none of this matters because you're receiving college credit anyway, and this will exempt you from taking a class so you won't be losing any money, think again. You actually will be asked to pay for the credit you would earn for the internship, and if it doesn't substitute for a class, that's an extra $400-$800 you would be spending towards your degree. Again, that's if you want the internship to count for college credit, which I'm sure most college students would either way.

Here is how I see my situation: I'm an unpaid intern. I literally cost nothing to the company I work for. As a result, the company feels no need to keep me busy and productive. I am basically a lost puppy within the office just waiting for someone to give me their attention with an actual, real assignment to do. I can sit at my desk all day and my cost to the company would be negligible. That's why they don't see a need to keep me occupied. However, if I was paid, you can be damn sure they would squeeze every ounce of productivity out of me. Yes, the company's payroll will go up, but so will productivity - not just mine, but of the permanent employees, as well.

All I'm saying is when you're an intern and the line of work you're doing is the equivalent to a paid associate, it is genuinely and truly exploitation.

See, there is a fine line between being an intern and being exploited for free labor. While you do gain valuable work experience, how would you feel at the end of each and every work day knowing that your day's work amounts to the intangible "experience" that you can put on your resume? Don't get me wrong, experience is what makes or breaks you when HR reviews your resume. But wouldn't it be nice if you got paid for it? It would most certainly make you feel more empowered about the job you're doing and, consequently, make you work harder and more proficiently if you know at the end of the day you're receiving an income for it.

Let's look at it from a standpoint of cheap, relatively unskilled labor. If interns were paid to work, this would shift the burden of less important tasks to interns. Instead of having an analyst spend an hour everyday on a task, spend a few bucks and pay the intern to do it. This frees up the time of the analyst and enables him or her to work more on projects which will bring in far more revenue and effectively negate the cost of paying an intern. If an analyst can spend a few more hours a week and work on a project that is going to make the company an extra $50,000 that month, isn't the expense of paying an intern $2,000 per month more worth it instead?

Think of it as outsourcing jobs. A full time employee is expensive, so why have him or her do tasks that can be done for less cost? Free up the expensive payroll for things that justify "expensive payroll." Have an intern do the basics; that's what the foundation will be built upon and that's why interns should be cherished and much more appreciated.

Now you can ask "why even bother paying interns when you can still keep them busy anyway?" Well, would you really put in 110 percent for something you get no tangible return for? While you get experience, money is truly (yet unfortunately) the idealistic motivator.