This is about an important issue amongst the students — unpaid internships. With the growing emphasis on hands-on experience rather than a degree, many students seek internships during their academic period, but the prevailing number of unpaid opportunities is concerning. The opportunity to gain experience and learn often comes exploiting young individuals as it offers no financial benefits in return.
Scenarios like these are creating significant problems for students, especially those belonging to lower-income backgrounds. Many students often miss out on career-boosting opportunities simply because they can’t afford to learn through unpaid jobs. This gives leverage to privileged students who can afford to work and gain experience through unpaid internship programmes, leaving others to struggle in the competitive job market.
In today’s academic world, skills and experience is preferred over degrees and internships play a significant role in helping students to penetrate the market. Because of the constant struggle to compete with your batchmates, students often take up more burden than they can handle and opt for unpaid internships just to keep up with the rest. As a result, they can feel burnout which negatively impacts their academic performance and their mental health.
Addressing this issue is important because at stake is the students’ health and wellbeing as well as the country’s future. Internships should be a fun and learning experience where students can gain hands-on experience regardless of their financial backgrounds. Therefore, organisations should compensate the students for their efforts by at least providing a basic stipend and covering fuel costs so that more people can build their careers.
Ehwer Hashmi
Karachi
