what the class of 2011 has to say about entering the job market (AKA reality slap) http://www.nytimes.com/2012/03/25/magazine/what-the-fate-of-one-class-of-2011-says-about-the-job-market.html?ref=education
This quote from the article sums things up nicely: "I guess I had unrealistic expectations. I thought that someone was going to hand me a job and say, “You’re the one we want and you’ll go far, kid.” That wasn’t the case." No kidding. The world doesn't owe you a job just because you graduated from college. I noticed that the students in the article who were doing well either started their own businesses or did a lot of networking and internships while they were still in college. The student that said he turned down an unpaid internship and added "If you can't pay me $10 an hour you don't deserve to be in business" is a perfect example of the entitlement mentality that is so pervasive in the U.S. today. Bottom line: if students expect everything to be handed to them when they graduate, they are going to be sorely disappointed. Get off your butt and work for the job you want, or create your own job. Put that degree and the space between your ears to work and stop whining.
An unpaid internship while still in college makes sense, provided that someone else is paying the student' bills. And while I can agree that the response from the student appears to have been just an emotional one, I can understand his position in situations where you have to pay your own bills during and after college, then considering the type of economic time we're in, then combine that with needing an income to survive... it's possible that this particular student couldn't afford to not be paid. I've always had to pay for my own schooling, so unpaid internships would've never been a possibility for me.
Then he has the option of not doing the internship, but don't whine about the fact that there are unpaid internships out there. Besides, some of these internships can turn into full-time paying jobs. The company I work for doesn't pay interns, but we hire people who have interned for us all the time.
You have to consider that while people do get hired from them, plenty don't. And as I pointed out, if you have bills to pay it's a non-issue because you can't take it anyway unless you plan to do the unpaid internship--with no guarantee of getting hired whether you do well or not--while eventually living on the street or at a shelter since without an income an no one to help with bills, a person will be heading there sooner or later. I'm not saying there is anything wrong with an unpaid internship, I'm just saying considering what's going on in our economy today and/or circumstances where you have to rely on yourself to make ends meet, it's understandable how his attitude could be shaped by those kinds of factors. Who knows; in a different circumstance his attitude may be different.
I was once an unpaid intern and I believe it was worth the time and effort because I got a couple of professional references that help me get started in my career. At the same time, I worked at a paid job throughout my entire college career. It's not that unusual, lots of people do that. I think that in most ways I am a fairly sympathetic person in that I feel bad when someone's life goes wrong, like an illness or a car accident. But I'm fairly unsympathetic towards people who coast through college, letting mommy and daddy pay the bills and then whine about not being able to get a job. Typically I think that a bit of a reality slap is in order in these cases. The funny part is that I think that this general scenario is how we account for the huge number of DL MBA programs. At some point these people wake up and realized that their degree in English is never going to get them a job and that it might be better to be the manager of the retail store than the cashier.
The bottom line is nobody owes these students anything. They have to make their own way in the world, and yes it's going to be tough. My longest stint of unemployment lasted six months, during the recession of 1990-91. That was the last time I was unemployed for any significant period of time. After that, I realized that you have to do what you have to do to put food on the table and keep a roof over your head. That means I did things like work three jobs, work as a stock person in a fabric store, and...when I needed health insurance for my family...work at a hardware store part time while working another full time job that didn't have insurance. I worked seven days a week for more than a year. So, I'm sorry...but I have no sympathy for somebody moaning about an unpaid internship and a sense of entitlement that they should have their dream job just because they have a degree. I worked nearly 20 years before I landed what I considered to be my "dream job." If you don't pay your dues, you won't get your due.
While it's surprising how many folks expect a yellow brick road laid out in front of them, it's also a pleasant surprise to hear how many students are frugal and expect to work hard to be well-compensated. Thankfully, I hear a lot of the latter lately. As far as the entitlement attitude, it is not limited to just graduating college students. There are significant numbers of Americans across the spectrum who have these sorts of attitudes, and it is a source of problems for the country. But I should try to leave that soapbox for another thread.
I agree that it is not limited to the young. It's likely that those with a sense of entitlement are in for a rude awakening in most cases.
I've been thinking more and more about starting my own business. I have found recently that those employees who are most productive (including executives) would likely be just as successful out on their own as they would be working for someone else. That's something to really think about...
