tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7146512.post114833846610141147..comments2024-03-12T22:31:46.500-04:00Comments on What Would Phoebe Do?: Unpaid internships: a (long, repetitive) response to the responsesPhoebe Maltz Bovyhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/17996039330841139883noreply@blogger.comBlogger1125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7146512.post-1148657536467176932006-05-26T11:32:00.000-04:002006-05-26T11:32:00.000-04:00(Yes, that Jacob.)I agree with you, and should hav...(Yes, that Jacob.)<BR/><BR/>I agree with you, and should have emphasized the point differently. Jobs that have as a prerequisite entry-level a couple of years of completely unpaid work are, as your other commentators have noted, unavailable to those whose parents can't subsidize those years. It's not just, not even primarily, that finance or law top out higher than journalism or publishing that makes the former but not the latter routes for social mobility. It's that the latter start out at zero pay, which serves as a kind of class-gatekeeping.<BR/><BR/>Anyway, I understand that this wasn't your point-- just thought it was complementary. "Real" internships can't be a prerequisite for entry into a career, because there's a sharp upper limit on the number of real interns an organization can handle at once. Unpaid filing clerks who get called interns make possible a very different business model, one in which the unpaid-labor years really are a kind of prereq-- and one that's not self-limiting, because each new unpaid intern subtracts work from the paid staff (rather than, as in a good internship, adding to it).Jacob T. Levyhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/02575549001627195334noreply@blogger.com