Unpaid Internships: The Impact of Scholarships on Career Dev - Essay Sample

Introduction

There is little chance that the readers of this publication need to be convinced of the value of internships. Years of employer surveys, research studies, and anecdotal stories from students paint a positive picture of internships as an important tool in helping students get started in a career. Research has labeled internships as a "high-impact practice" that has a positive effect on learning, retention, and graduation rates.1

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While the value of internships is well established, there has been some unease with the practice of unpaid internships. There is concern that unpaid internships are not an option for lower-income students, giving them fewer opportunities than their wealthier peers. There is also some evidence that unpaid internships have less direct value on career outcomes.

At Metropolitan State University of Denver (MSU Denver), pay is a practical concern for our students. MSU Denver is a comprehensive, modified open-access, public university with 20,000 undergraduate and graduate students. The student body is highly diverse in ethnicity, socio-economic background, and age, with a large number of first-generation college students. Many of our students work full time or work multiple part-time jobs just to survive.

Last fall, the university was given some funding and allowed to use the money for programs that it thought could positively impact student outcomes. It is not surprising that the internship staff took the opportunity to put together the "earn and learn" program, designed to provide an hourly wage for students doing unpaid internships. Our goal was to determine if we could increase the number of students doing internships, and, even more importantly, see if we could impact the demographics of the students doing internships.

Literature Review

In embarking on this pilot program, it was important for us to understand what research was available as well as where there were gaps. A few years ago, NACE did a call for research in this area, and several of those studies have been published in this journal. However, those studies primarily focused on the value, learning, and career outcomes of unpaid internships.2, 3, 4 There has been less discussion of the impact that lack of pay has on students deciding to do an internship.

While higher education professionals are trying to encourage students to take time for these highly impactful experiences, we also want to think about how we have been encouraging employers to provide these opportunities in an equitable way and to get creative in how to get them paid.

In their study, Townsley, Lierman, Watermill, and Rousseau noted "the introduction of internship funding for every student increases access to internship opportunities."5 There are also findings within that study that highlight the higher likelihood of traditional-aged students whose families had gone to college taking advantage of these opportunities more frequently than first-generation, nontraditional, and/or transfer students. They also found that funded opportunities "[led to] a decline in the number of students who never completed an internship."6 So, pay can help with increasing access, but the question is still, for whom? And how does this show up when looking at equity in those numbers?

The conversation around access to internships, especially those that are paid, also comes down to a difference in gender and economic status. For example, in an article about unpaid internships, Philip Gardner reported that "men from families with incomes above $120,000 were more likely to be in for-profit paid internships...Women from lower income families were more likely to be in internships with nonprofits and government than higher income women students. By [and] large, women from higher incomes were found in for-profit internships."7 Gardner found that women were more likely to be in unpaid positions; interestingly, being lower income amplified that tendency.

Similarly, Mayo and Shethji noted that "the lack of affordability of both internships and, more broadly, a college education, leaves low-income students at a significant disadvantage in a competitive labor market."8 These findings underscore the impact programs could have when institutional funding is provided for internships; such programs can assist students in accessing their career aspirations.

It is also clear in the research that internship opportunities benefitted all students in preparing them for their future careers and provided beneficial experience and skills more broadly. Finley and McNair noted that there were specific groups that seemed to show the greatest impact when participating in high-impact practices, such as internships. Latinx and African-American students showed greater increases in "self-reported gains, grade point averages, and retention."9 Kinzie also found that, with increased participation, Latinx students were graduating in fewer semesters than those not participating, but that both "Latino and African-American students participate in internships less frequently than white students."10 Though research shows internships may provide even greater benefits to students of color and low-income students, we lack research into the obstacles that prevent these students from participating.

"I was more motivated to go to my internship knowing that I'll be paid for all the work I would be doing. I also felt like my time wasn't being wasted in terms of income, which is very important to me"- Student

In most of the research, the population of the student body studied was shown to be quite different than that of MSU Denver. Our demographics represent a seemingly growing population in the United States: urban, nontraditional, and greatly first generation. Kinzie shares the need for more diverse ideas on how to provide access to experiential learning, and one way to try to address that need may be "more responsive financial aid rewards..."11 We hope that MSU Denver's "earn and learn" program will add to this body of research to look at whether institutional internship funding will increase participation for broader groups of students.

Studying the Potential Impact of “Earn and Learn”

The premise for our own study was that, if we could guarantee pay for internships in majors that traditionally do not have many options for paid internships, we would then be able to look at the students who took advantage of this opportunity and compare them to a previous cohort who did not have the option of a paid internship.

We selected three majors for the "earn and learn" program: political science, psychology, and biology. These are majors at MSU Denver in which internships are encouraged, but not required, and fields in which there are few paid opportunities. In October 2018, we began marketing to students in the three majors. The message was that any student in the selected majors who got an unpaid internship for spring 2019 would be paid by the university for their internship hours.

We had three research questions that we hoped to answer:

• Does offering pay for traditionally unpaid internships increase the number of students able and willing to complete internships?
• Does offering pay for traditionally unpaid internships change the demographics of students doing internships?
• What impact does internship pay have on the internship experience?

Our comparison group were students from the same three majors who did internships in spring 2018. By looking at the numbers and demographics of the unpaid students from spring 2018 compared to the paid group from 2019, we hoped to answer the first two questions. Surveys of the students and their supervisors would provide the answer to the third research question.

Findings: Socio-Economic Status Affected Participation

The results were dramatic: The spring 2018 comparison group (unpaid interns from the three target majors) consisted of 22 students. When given the opportunity for a paid internship, the number of interns in the three target majors for spring 2019 jumped to 50-an increase of 127 percent. This provides strong evidence that offering pay in fields that traditionally do not have paid internships has the potential to increase the number of interns.

In addition, the demographics of the groups were compared on the basis of Pell eligibility, first-generation status, race/ethnicity, and gender.

Interestingly, there were no significant differences in any of these areas except Pell eligibility: Twenty-seven percent of the 2018 students were Pell eligible and 56 percent of the 2019 students were Pell eligible. (This difference was statistically significant at the a = 0.05 level.)

It is interesting that, among those taking part in our study, socio-economic status was significant, while the other demographic factors were not. It raises the possibility that financial need is a bigger barrier to internship participation than other demographic factors. This is an area for further exploration with a larger pool.

Findings: The Impact of Pay

"Being paid for my time made me feel more valued. It is difficult to stay motivated in a position that is unpaid, especially when I have bills to pay and food to buy. The pay also reduced my financial stress, which helped me to focus on schoolwork."- Student

Students and their internship supervisors were asked to complete surveys about the experience. A total of 41 students and 25 employers took part. (Some employers had multiple interns.) From these surveys, we were able to learn a little more about the impact of pay.

1. Pay as a motivator for doing an internship: Despite the efforts at publicity for the program, most of the students did not know about "earn and learn" until after they visited the office. This raises the question: Why did we see such a dramatic increase in internship numbers if most of the students did not know about it before starting their internship search?

The answer may come from an exploration of the decision-making process. When asked about the importance of "earn and learn" to their decision to do an internship, students were clear: It was very or extremely important. So, while the publicity for the program may not have brought in a large influx of new students seeking an internship, the chance for pay "sealed the deal" for those students already thinking about doing an internship.

This was further explored through a question that asked students to assess how serious they were about doing an internship. Nearly 20 percent of the respondents were sure that they would never had done an internship without pay, and another 41 percent were not sure if they would have done one without pay. (See Figure 2.)

2. Impact of pay on the student: As a diverse, open-access institution, MSU Denver has a high number of students who are financially insecure.

The "earn and learn" students were paid $12.50 per hour for a maximum of 150 hours and a total of less than $2,000 per student. This relatively small amount of money had a big impact. The money provided through the "earn and learn" program was overwhelmingly used to pay basic living expenses or pay for books and supplies. Students also indicated that they used the funds to pay for parking at their internship site or gas to get there. Only seven respondents indicated that any portion of the money was used for entertainment, illustrating how tight budge...