Internships for Lasell students should be paid. For most students at Lasell, internships are a requirement for junior or senior year students to aid a capstone or connect them with an employer after undergraduate schooling. Unpaid internships are internships without financial compensation. Oftentimes, the compensation for the labor in this regard is considered college credit. However, paid internships often offer college credit and financial compensation. This is why all internships should require both pay and academic credit. After all, the student is learning, yes, but they are also most likely doing helpful work for the company or business they are interning at.
While doing an internship, students are most likely to be working, taking other academic courses, and having any other responsibilities a college student could have. Arguments have been made in the past that non-paid internships could be a form of exploitation, especially among marginalized communities. Having the option of pay, while learning in a respective field, should be ideal for college students because no one can live without a livable wage, but also because not having to focus on another work experience that pays would open up the student to do the work for their internship without any distractions.
Apart from just earning a wage to begin with, students would also be able to get a better understanding of the earnings they may make if they’re allowed to work for the company they are connected with after the internship opportunity has taken place. Everyone deserves to make a living wage for the work they are doing, and that ideology can be assessed when students are given the ability to understand their future earnings.
Apart from the benefits of the college student, the company will strategically benefit from the use of paid interns. Paid interns are more aware and engaged in the work they are doing because they truly admire the company while having a desire to build loyalty with it. By using interns as a form of recruitment, a benefit is created by lowering the costs that come with recruitment and training of individuals who already have a degree in the respective field. This enhances the reputation of a company and attracts more high-caliber candidates because they can see that the company has a desire to invest in interns with a certain level of loyalty and good work ethic.
Obviously, work can vary a lot between different internships and the level of work a student might be doing as a junior intern as opposed to a senior intern navigating the job market the following year. For clarification, paid internships should be given to students who are performing work that is most similar to the work that employed workers are doing, not a mere low-level internship of getting coffee and making copies.
At the end of the day, interns are entitled to some level of monetary compensation under the Fair Labor Standards Act, which establishes overtime pay, minimum wage, and child labor protections in US law.
–May 15, 2026–
