As of this semester I have officially reached the point in college that many students dread: internship time. While many of our majors require internships to graduate, almost all businesses require students to have internship experience before they will get hired. Being an English Literature major, I am able to graduate without taking on an internship, however, most publishing and editing companies look for people with three to five years of experience for even entry-level positions.

Not only is the length of required experience absurd, the fact that such experience is required for an entry-level job is ridiculous. I mean who graduates with more than a year of experience in their field, if that? Unfortunately, this leaves students with one of two choices; secure an internship or accept the fact that they will probably be a waitress until they die.

This system of forcing students into finding an internship is a backward scam of its own. Not only are internships, by their nature, very competitive and limited, they are also usually unpaid. Basically, these companies want you to work for them, for free, for months on end in order to possibly increase your chances of getting hired with then once you graduate. So unless you’re able to get college credit for the internship, you’re basically just being exploited.

As an English Literature major, finding internship opportunities has been especially difficult considering that most of the major publishing and editing companies are based out of New York. So not only do these companies want you to work for them for free, which usually means giving up your current job where you actually get paid so that you can dedicate all of your attention to the internship, they want you to move.

I can barely afford to live with the hours I work at my current job when I’m not in class, but these companies want me to give that up and pay out of my own pocket for an internship where I’m not even guaranteed a job at the end? I don’t think so. It’s a complete scam, especially once one considers what interns actually do: grunt work. Most interns do the work of a secretary or an errand-boy. How is that conducive to my learning of the craft? How is getting the whole office coffee going to prepare me for having a real job at this company? How does copying papers count as “experience” in the field?

In short; it isn’t, it doesn’t and it shouldn’t. Internships are just an excuse for companies to get free labor from college students who have no other choices. Most of them aren’t learning experiences; they don’t actually prepare students for a real job, they just exploit the students’ need for an internship of their resume.

Unpaid internships either need to become a thing of the past or internships should no longer be looked at as a requirement. Companies need to pay students for the work that they do and not just exploit them. We deserve better.