No pay, no gain?

A recent New York Times article surrounding the legality of unpaid internship unleashed a flurry of responses, all debating whether ambitious college kids are being cheated of their time and money by working for free.

But the legal question is not the only facet of the debate over internships. Do unpaid internships increase or decrease prosperity in the long term? Do they stratify socioeconomic divides? Do they perpetuate an advantage already held by those who can afford to work for free?

Most argue, yes — "the less fortunate were missing out on a large swath of internship opportunities … (because of) the disparity between those who have the means to work for free and those who don’t."

The legal question rarely reaches the table because the conversation is "discussed in terms of the potential exclusion of students who don’t have rich parents from opportunities."

Nearly all internships in the federal government are unpaid, as well as those in countless industries, and the numbers are only growing as the economy worsens. It is a known fact that college internships often lead to jobs. And so a larger question that must be asked is, if unpaid internships determine the barrier to entry in certain fields, will these arenas become economically homogeneous? Are we taking a giant step backward in regard to financial opportunity?

An argument in favor of unpaid internships can just as easily be made. College students are awarded the opportunity to look inside an industry that they might not otherwise have been able to gain exposure to. The classic argument is that internships offer a "foot in the door."

In the case of government or nonprofit internships, students are helping to further a cause and work for the public good. And internships are not, by necessity, exclusionary. Many national and university-based grants exist for students with unpaid internships, with preference given to those who might not otherwise be able to afford it.

Do unpaid internships qualify under Rawls's "justice as fairness" provision?

According to one summarization, Rawls's proposal can be boiled down to the following two points:

1. Each person has an equal claim to a fully adequate scheme of equal basic rights and liberties, which scheme is compatible with the same scheme for all; and in this scheme the equal political liberties, and only those liberties, are to be guaranteed their fair value.

2. Social and economic inequalities are to satisfy two conditions: (a) They are to be attached to positions and offices open to all under conditions of fair equality of opportunity; and (b), they are to be to the greatest benefit of the least advantaged members of society.

Unpaid internships clearly fail the test when the second point is brought into the conversation. Though there are no explicit barriers to the positions, opportunity cost keeps the jobs from being open to all members of society. And unpaid internships clearly are not to the greatest benefit of the least advantaged. But does that mean they should be dismissed altogether?

While all students may not have the economic liberty to engage in a job where they will receive no payment, internships provide undeniable levels of opportunity. According to welfare-based principles, "material goods and services have no intrinsic value and are valuable only in so far as they increase welfare." Though there is no immediate monetary value that results from an unpaid internship, the long-term benefits in experience and networking ultimately do increase welfare. And when an intern is serving a nonprofit or the public sector, welfare for all theoretically increases as well.

So while it probably should not be legal for a for-profit company to shirk their interns — a matter the Department of Labor is already looking into — unpaid internships all across the board should not be dismissed out of hand. As long as opportunities are made available to all students, through counseling from universities, grants and stipends, unpaid internships do have the potential to further societal and personal welfare.