Dive Brief:
- An appellate court ruling has scaled back a 2013 lower court decision that made unpaid internships look like they might become a thing of the past.
- The original ruling found unpaid internships to be illegal if the intern’s work benefits the employer, but the latest ruling approved of that scenario if the work primarily benefits the intern and has educational value — whether tied to formal credit or not.
- This latest ruling likely will not be the last in a case originally brought by an intern who worked on the film Black Swan, making some critics of the latest decision prefer a wait-and-see approach.
Dive Insight:
Large employers with deep pockets that only offered unpaid internships got a lot of negative attention when the lawsuit was decided for the first time in 2013. Since then, many of them — including all of the major Hollywood studios — have begun paying interns, acknowledging their value to the organization.
Colleges have earned some criticism of their own for facilitating unpaid internships. At this point, many institutions that require students to participate in an internship to qualify for their degree demand students get paid. Northeastern University, with one of the oldest co-op programs in the country, encourages hourly wages. But at the minimum, it requires at least a stipend.
Beyond pushing employers to recognize the value of student labor, advocating for internship pay opens doors for lower-income students who cannot afford to work for free, in the name of experience or not.