> unpaid internships are both obviously beneficial to those who take them and ah, skirting the law to all parties’ benefit.
Unpaid internships are a great way to gate off poor people from high-paying jobs. No matter how beneficial they are to the intern, if said intern can't afford rent and food while on your internship it's simply not an option for them. Unpaid internships have no place in a society that wants to consider itself a meritocracy because the primary qualification for an unpaid internship is not merit but a well-off family.
If you can afford to not work for three or four years while getting a Bachelor’s and the tens of thousands of dollars you pay in tuition you can afford to do a six month unpaid internship.
What you say is absolutely true but if unpaid internships are a problems journalism schools and other forms of credentialist gatekeeping are much worse.
If the choice existed would you rather go to Columbia Journalism School it spend two years working for the New York Post unpaid? Wouldn’t you get more and more valuable experience as a dogsbody for a fashion photographer than doing a degree in photography?
Credentialism is bad for the sane reason unpaid internships are bad but does vastly more damage to oppprtunity.
Unpaid internships are a great way to gate off poor people from high-paying jobs. No matter how beneficial they are to the intern, if said intern can't afford rent and food while on your internship it's simply not an option for them. Unpaid internships have no place in a society that wants to consider itself a meritocracy because the primary qualification for an unpaid internship is not merit but a well-off family.