Internships

Are the unpaid internships a bad thing?

Point.

Counterpoint.

I had an unpaid internship at the U.S. State Department between my junior and senior years of college. In fact, in order to get college credits for it, I had to pay tuition to the school. The ironic thing is that the government spent approximately $10,000 doing a background investigation so that I could get a "top secret" security clearance. I always assumed that expense was not a deterrent to the bureau that I worked at because it came out of someone else's budget.

I suppose that it is true that kids from well-to-do families are in a better position to spend a summer working without pay, but kids from well-to-do families are in a better position to go to private colleges too. Does that make Harvard evil?