Unpaid internships worsen inequality of opportunity

It is that time of year again. As students plow through the spring semester, clouds of anxiety regarding summer plans loom in the air. It is the season of applications, interviews, networking and shameless self-promotion. The annual hunt for summer opportunities is a grueling and competitive process. As such, career-hungry college students expand their search to include unpaid internships for the sake of their desperately short resumes.

However, an entire summer filled with long hours devoid of compensation is simply a financial impossibility for many. The option to tick off more boxes from the job search can be a luxury not all college students can afford. In fact, 80 percent of students still have to carry some or all of the burden of their tuition fees with part-time or full-time jobs. Except for the lucky few who manage to receive grants, unpaid internships are often "self-paid" by the more fortunate students who have resourceful parents. As such, lower-income students face inequality of opportunity even before taking the first step to economic mobility by networking at an internship. In other words, there is a deep opportunity gap between equally qualified students based on their level of wealth.

Not only does this cycle of exclusion hold back a large portion of less-privileged students, it is also a major drawback for the companies themselves. Corporations who deny their summer interns of wages are depriving themselves of access to a much larger pool of credentialed applicants. At a time when our country's most competitive high-paying industries are still clearly plagued by a severe lack of diversity, why should a system so limiting and discriminatory still be the main path to a desirable, well-paying career?

Take for instance the notorious homogeneity on Wall Street. According to a report by Vettery, a startup recruiting firm, 65 percent of first-year analysts in 2014 were white, while 29 percent were Asian and only six percent were black or Hispanic. Additionally, the study demonstrated that the greatest number of graduates who received analyst jobs hailed from Ivy League schools including Harvard, Yale, Princeton and the University of Pennsylvania. While highly-sought companies like those on Wall Street have claimed to be committed to recruiting and hiring diverse candidates, there is clearly a prototype for those who land these competitive jobs in finance. 

The bottom line is that the system of unpaid internships unfairly weeds out an entire group of qualified students who simply cannot afford to sacrifice their summers without contributing to the cost of their higher education. A stamp on the resume is not enough for those who lack financial flexibility. If the corporate world continues to rely on free labor from college undergrads, any prospect of expanding opportunity and diversifying the workplace continues to be a shot in the dark.