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Jason Pare <Jason_Pare_at_Tech-Pubs -at- CCMAILPC -dot- CTRON -dot- COM> asks:
>Is anyone familiar with the college internship policies of their employer?
My previous employer paid its interns. I don't think they paid them poorly
either. One of my current clients hires college students as contractors,
but is now paying fines to the IRS for treating employees as contractors.
>Is it a common practice for writing-based internships to be unpaid?
When I was a journalism major in college, many of the internships were
unpaid. Our professors told us to look for paid jobs first. They didn't
think newspapers should get free labor.
Technical companies can better afford to pay interns than most newspapers.
What is the reason the school uses for requiring unpaid interships? Is it
just so there will be more internships to go around?
The important thing in an intership is to make sure the company will let
you learn something -- not just copy/collate papers and mind the fax
machine. If the company is paying you, they have an incentive to give you
valuable work to do.
Yvonne DeGraw, Technical Services o Web Authoring
yvonne -at- silcom -dot- com o Technical Writing http://www.silcom.com/~yvonne/ o Database Design and Publishing
Tel: 805/683-5784 o User-Interface Design
