Lynn Miller is the CEO of 4GreenPs, a Washington, D.C.-based marketing firm for green businesses. This opening passage is excerpted (with permission) from an April 3 post she wrote on her company blog. Like all opinion pieces we feature, it does not necessarily represent the views of Internships.com or its affiliates.

By Lynn Miller

There’s a debate raging in companies throughout the U.S. To pay or not to pay – that is the question.

Unpaid internships – for college credit  – are a longstanding tradition in this country. But somewhere, somehow, the college credits disappeared from many internship agreements, and cold, hard cash never took its place.

Businesses desperately trying to grow in these tough times have found a ready and willing crop of students and recent college grads, begging to work – unpaid.

“Somewhere, somehow, the college credits disappeared from many internship agreements, and cold, hard cash never took its place.”

In the “sustainability sector,” it’s a perfect storm. The struggling “new green economy,” and a surge of interest among college students  in anything smacking of social enterprise, sustainability, green business and corporate social responsibility led to a situation where it became commonplace for green businesses to openly advertise unpaid internships. It was a win-win … or so we thought.
Read the full post on 4GreenPs’ blog. >>>

Vannessa Vargas

By Vannessa Vargas

I can probably guess you already know what this blog is going to be about: Internships and schoolwork! It has been tough trying to keep up with the Joneses on time management. I have a job and I go to school, plus I blog for Internships.com.

I have been trying to maintain a schedule between my work and school, not to mention study time. It has been quite the learning experience. I also have been looking toward the future and deciding what I am going to do next, especially when my gig is up as a blogger for this site. I have found out that my hometown has a film festival coming up with Q-and-A’s at the end. This will be a great way to learn more about the technical aspects of this business, especially when it comes to someone seeing your work and the funding of your project.

Vannessa plans to volunteer at this year's Houston International Festival, or iFest.

I am at that tricky stage where one tries to find like-minded people to help her/him on their way. I recently have found that you don’t necessarily need to have an internship. Volunteer work is just as great. Even if you are volunteering for something that may not be exactly in your field of work, you will be learning and gaining new experiences.

Recently, I signed up to help at a local festival in my home city. It is an international festival that showcases different cultures around the world. The entertainment is a mixed bag of musicians and dancers from different parts of the world and the food is a variety of cultural goodies. I will be part of the “Hospitality Crew,” which is basically making sure the band or dancers we’re assigned to are well taken care of. I got assigned to a Middle Eastern folk band. I’m really interested in hearing how the Middle East does folk. This is not exactly the career I am going for (I want to be a writer), but it could make for a great future story or some other sort of inspiration.

That’s the beauty of searching for internships or a job. Whether you are attending events about your craft or volunteering for events in the area of your expertise, these experiences can also inspire you to do something different than you might have originally planned. So hopefully I will constantly be inspired with each new job opportunity I get.

If an intern comes up with an idea that nets an employer big money, is he or she entitled to a significant reward?

That’s a question I asked myself this weekend when a coworker pointed me to a Quora discussion about major intern success stories at net startups. In it, I found a link to the story of programmer Noah Weiss, a summer intern at Fog Creek Software (a company I recognized because they developed Internships.com’s work scheduling interface, FogBugz).

While interning at Fog Creek, Noah suggested to CEO Joel Sposky that the site should run job listings along the edges of the company blog, which was one of the more read and respected tech blogs on the Internet. Though Sposky was originally hesitant to add clutter to the site, he changed his mind when Weiss told him just how much revenue the listings could bring: over $300 per ad.

In a short period of time, Weiss’ four-week internship project generated almost $1 million for Fog Creek with practically zero maintenance costs — clearly a big deal, and one that could be attributed to the idea and development efforts of one intern. But Sposky says he felt hesitant about offering Weiss a big performance bonus because of the grumbling it could cause among his full-time employees, many of whom had contributed to other very successful projects in ways that were harder to measure. In the end, Sposky’s offer of 10,000 shares of Fog Creek stock in exchange for a full-time employment commitment after graduation wasn’t enough to lure Weiss away from a better offer made by Google.

Fog Creek intern Noah Weiss left the company to join Google despite Joel Sposky's stock reward for netting the company nearly $1 million in revenue.

Did Sposky shortchange Weiss, or did he do the right thing for the company? Remember: 10,000 shares of a burgeoning tech company can be worth a heck of a lot more than an intern-level salary.

Personally, I can’t blame either party. Weiss deserved more, and Sposky could have used a bright young talent like him, but I’ve seen enough workplace politics to know that an intern cashing out on a relatively simple project — however genius it may have been — would ruffle a few feathers, probably to the point where good employees might have left Fog Creek. And when you do something big like Weiss did, bigger fish always take notice. His compensation was coming from somewhere — and good for him; he earned it.

What do you think about Sposky’s decision? Post your opinion below.

Internships.com CEO Robin Richards puts forth a compelling argument in The Huffington Post this morning on why employers should pay their interns.

I know that in the past, Robin has been critical of the government telling businesses they can’t hire unpaid ones — partially because of the probability that these regulations would knock small enterprises out of business when we need them the most. But he also acknowledges that there’s a moral dilemma and threat to workplace efficiency that comes with pricing out qualified candidates who can’t afford to take unpaid internships.

People have varying and passionate opinions on the matter, and Robin does an excellent job here of clarifying the conflict behind an issue that’s not nearly as simple as it seems. If you have any interest in the future of entry-level employment, this is a must-read.

This weekend, a contentious debate over internships and their effect on social mobility was revived in the UK, when it was revealed that the conservative Tories – the party helmed by Prime Minister David Cameron – sold off high-profile finance internships at institutions connected with the City of London for an average of about £3,000 ($4,800) at an annual political fundraiser. Many of the attending families were already part of Great Britain’s social elite.

That revelation was particularly offensive to regular critics of the modern internship system, who argue that one’s financial ability to do unpaid work already determines whether or not they can “buy access' to great connections the most prestigious careers.

David Cameron's Conservative party came under fire this weekend after it was revealed that a fundraiser sold internships to wealthy families. (Credit: British National Archives)

In the United States, the Obama Administration signaled its opposition to unpaid internships last April, when new Labor Department regulations made the vast majority of them illegal. (You can read Mark Cuban’s rant about this in one of our “Breakfast Debate' posts from last week.) Of course, these new regulations have rarely been enforced. Unpaid internships are still twice as prevalent as paid ones on Internships.com, and perhaps higher in the employment pool at large.

At first glance, this might seem to be purely a question of government regulation – whether employers should be forced to make their internships accessible to people regardless of income. Few would argue that enforcing a ban on unpaid internships wouldn’t place immediate financial strain on businesses at a bad time, knowing the degree to which they’ve been relied upon during the current recession. And, as Cuban and others have argued, earning valuable experience for no pay is better than sitting on a couch for no pay.

But democratizing access to prestigious internships may be in the best interest of the employers themselves – and some companies who pay good money for their interns appear to subscribe to that logic.

Still, it’s a relatively rare sentiment. So that begs the question: Are the students getting footholds at America’s most influential institutions really our best and brightest? Or, by allowing sales and auctions of their internship positions – or, to a lesser extent, soliciting unpaid ones – are employers sacrificing their ability to compete in the future to make their margins today?

What do you think? Let us know where you stand on this tricky issue in the comments below.

Though some signs point to a slightly improving labor market, many employers have been very reluctant to expand their payrolls during the long climb out of the Great Recession. The result? Today’s graduating classes are becoming very familiar with the phrase “unpaid internship” — and not everyone feels the same way about it.

Mark Cuban Credit: James Duncan Davidson/O'Reilly Media, Inc.

Is the explosion of unpaid internships an opportunity, exploitation or a little of both? Today we present two (somewhat) opposing viewpoints on the matter.

• Dallas Mavericks owner, entrepreneur and media mogul Mark Cuban lashes out at the government’s attempts to regulate unpaid internships in this blog post from 2009.

• Small business owner Dawn Reshen-Doty of Benay Enterprises, a Connecticut business management service, suggests employers can help the economy, a frustrated generation, and even Egypt by doing whatever it takes to hire one extra paid intern.

Do you think it’s fair for employers to hire unpaid interns? Leave a comment below.

Taryn Sidney

As a poor college student you may be wondering if there are any upsides to having an unpaid internship. I mean, working at a supermarket job won’t make you the next Carrie Bradshaw, but let’s be honest:  very few paid internships will let you live like Carrie Bradshaw either. For me, weighing the options of an unpaid internship was resolved using my favorite tactic: a  Pros and Cons list.

So what are the Pros of having an awesome unpaid internship?

• Experience:  First and most importantly, an internship gives you opportunities and experiences you may not get anywhere else. Having an internship gives you a way to get experience and your foot in the door.
• Test-drive a career:  I have an internship with CBS 3 Springfield where I work as a writer and editor for the material that goes on the air. I get to see all of the chaos and work that goes into putting together a news show—something I would never have known otherwise!  An internship gives you the chance to see if this is the type of career that is right for you.
• Opens doors: An internship also gives you better opportunities in the future. Having CBS 3 Springfield on my resume could open doors that I never imagined, whether because of the experience, the name, or the connections.
• Connections:  As an intern, you have the chance to meet outstanding people who have loads of great advice.  For me, getting to hang out with the reporters and producers was helpful because they shared their success stories and as well as constructive criticism on how I could improve.

Even though there are some definite positives to having an internship there sure are negatives too. So what are the Cons of an unpaid internship?

• Lots of work:  In all honesty I can say that one thing that bothers me, especially when it comes to internships in journalism, is there is a lot of work and no pay. I have to constantly remind myself that what I am doing will help me in the end.
• Other expenses:  You may have to dish out more money than you have in order to gain experience. I dream of a fabulous NYC summer internship but I will probably have to pay for housing,transportation,food, etc… but I won’t be making any money to actually afford it. Most of the internships that I’m looking into are full-time therefore leaving me no time to make any money.  What to do?

As you’re weighing your options, remind yourself that this is a personal decision—there’s no right choice. I made a Pros and Cons list to weight my options before I did my internship, and as hard as the cons were to swallow, I overlooked them because all I knew the experience was invaluable.

Taryn is one of our great student bloggers and she’s actively following in the footsteps of one of her heros, Katie Couric.  See Taryn’s other heroes, as well as the rest of our student bloggers here.

This fall, we asked our registered employers to tell us how they hire on our site. Want the inside scoop?  Read on!

Do alma maters matter?

Employers told us relevant experience and interview performance were the biggest factors in choosing an intern – and less than 9% of employers said the college an intern attended mattered. Having relevant internships is the best way to move up the ladder to more exciting internship opportunities – and, ultimately, to a much better full-time job.

Paid vs. Unpaid?

About 38% of employers say their internships are generally paid. Though employers have cut back on paid intern positions during the recession, there are still plenty out there. However, paid internships are, as a rule, more competitive. If you need one, make sure your resume and application materials are solid and ready to be sent out (or found…see next paragraph) ASAP.

They’re looking for you.

Almost half of employers said they’ve searched for interns on Internships.com instead of waiting for candidates to apply. That means there’s a good chance that your next internship could find you – but it raises the importance of keeping your profile complete and professional.

Bikini or beer pictures?

More often than not (54%), employers say they check an internship candidate’s social Web presence (i.e. Facebook, Twitter, MySpace,LinkedIn) during the hiring process. Even if they’re a tad impressed that you can continually drink liquid upside down for 38 seconds,chances are good it won’t do great things for your career.

Almost 42% of employers on Internships.com say their internship program is new. In other words, we don’t recycle the same listings you saw last year. On our site, you’ll find a variety of opportunities you might never have heard of, many of which are freshly posted, frequently updated and exclusive to Internships.com. You get quality and quantity. And who says you can’t have it all?