As summer approaches and the semester comes to a close, internships and summer jobs are on the minds of many university students. Internships provide the unique opportunity for students to discover more about their chosen fields, but making the choice to take on the internship war can mean giving up more than just one’s summer vacation.
The positive aspects of doing an internship are undeniable, with students being able to break into their fields and begin to make a name for themselves. Internships provide the opportunity to prepare for one’s future career, create professional contacts, cultivate professional skills, and boost future employability. As one Trinity student states, “I’d definitely say there are more pros than cons. Even if you could make more being a waiter, an internship in your field is going to be more helpful on a CV”. While statistics vary, an estimated 28 per cent to 50 per cent of students land full-time employment with their internship host company in Ireland, with that number rising to 50 per cent to 60 per cent for interns in the USA, proving that an internship is a key effective way to secure future employment.
“I feel like it is vital to have summer internships as an art student, because my degree is not an immediate track into any sort of a job in the way that other courses might be. So I feel a lot of pressure to get experience”, one Senior Fresh English Studies student explains. “I think some of your internships can be great as well in figuring out what kind of sector you want to go into. With my course being English, there are a lot of different fields you can get into. Other than just teaching, you can go into marketing, you can go into law, you can go into history, you can go into museums or curating. There’s a lot to do.” Internships provide that space to explore professionally without the true commitment of a full-time offer, offering insight, preparation, and experience for students to use in making key decisions for their future careers.
For many students, however, taking on the internship war has more cons than it does positives. Many internships limit a student’s ability to make money, and summer acts as a key time for most students to get the money that they rely on during the school year, whether that be for student fees, school books, nights out, or travelling. As one Trinity student notes, “That’s a big reason why I want to get an internship, because I’m from a very small town and if I don’t have an internship, I’m not going to be guaranteed for the hours of work a week, which is what I need to save up for Erasmus.” In Dublin, the pay range for internships is €12 to €15 an hour, with most companies paying minimum wage. That, paired with guaranteed hours, makes internships a smart choice for any student looking to both make money and boost their future employability.
However, while paid internships are mandatory in Ireland, the same cannot be said for many countries. As one student from the Netherlands notes, it’s common practice for internships where she lives to be paid by stipend; typically around €500-€900 a month, with one of her friends receiving a stipend of €550 a month for full-time work. This stipend, with full-time hours, works out to be €3.25 an hour, much lower than the €14.71 minimum wage. In the USA, roughly 40 per cent of all internships are unpaid, some opting instead to offer “exposure” if in a creative field, or offering credit for university, which many universities in America simply do not accept regardless. This reality means that to partake in an internship, millions of students have to give up their primary income period, which is not realistic for every student. There is a certain level of support needed for students to be able to take on an unpaid or low paying internship, and for students with responsibilities such as taking care of family members or attending to bills, it simply is not feasible.
An added layer is that internship opportunities are highly concentrated in major city hubs, such as Dublin or New York, which presents a problem for students who would have to relocate for an internship, as one Senior Fresher Trinity Film student notes, “sometimes internships don’t look the way you’d hope they would. They don’t pay as much, or they ask you to relocate but don’t offer to help with transportation or housing. Sometimes internships do and sometimes they don’t. Either way, it’s a tug-of-war situation. You just have to hope that it works out.” For a creative field like film, many internships would be hosted in Los Angeles or New York, which poses an issue for any student who is looking to break into the field but is unable to relocate, overall limiting internship and experience opportunities.
These limitations are all, naturally, dependent on even receiving an offer to intern at a host company. With limited internship opportunities, often students are competing with their own classmates and friends for the same spots. This can cause issues regarding relationships and mental health, as feelings of jealousy, inadequacy, and stress compound on each other. Constant rejections from the endless applications can cause a downturn in a student’s mental health, with a reported 74 per cent of students experiencing an increase in anxiety and 49 per cent experiencing an increase in depressive symptoms, as related to career uncertainty and pressure. With the months’ worth of applying, writing cover letters, tailoring your CV, stressing over interviews; the rejection emails can start to feel less like they have found a better fit for the role and more like a rejection of you as a human being.
In choosing to take on an internship, students are also faced with the decision of giving up their summer holiday. Most internships require a full-time commitment, limiting the ability for students to travel or make plans with friends. In giving up your summer vacation, one of the last times students will have to be kids again before entering the workforce, you give up time to be free; to travel and see the world, if one wants to and has the means to, to roadtrip with friends or catch a Ryanair flight for the weekend. It’s the choice of entering the professional world before graduation which can cause pause for some students, who would rather take a part-time summer job which allows the flexibility that one may want for one of their last ever summer holidays.
Internships pose a number of pros and cons for students to consider. With an estimated 55 per cent to 60 per cent of Irish students completing an internship during their university degree studies, summer internships are understood as a great way to break into one’s future career, offering the opportunity to learn and grow as a professional. Whether or not a summer internship is right for a student’s current and future needs is up to the individual, a choice that they have to make for themselves.
