Recent data has shown the importance of internships for college students has reached an all-time high.
Phil Gardner, the director of the Collegiate Employment Research Institute at Michigan State University, said in a recent Associated Press article that about three-fourths of all college students will have had some kind of internship or professional experience by the time they graduate.
When Gardner started following these statistics 25 years ago, he said only 35 to 40 percent of college graduates had similar internship experience.
The rise in numbers of students who intern has also led to increased competition for what are considered the most desirable internships.
In accordance with this, internship placement companies are more frequently helping students write resumes and apply for potential internships — for a fee.
One such company is University of Dreams, whose CEO Eric Lochtefeld said in the AP article his company can provide students with an advantage to getting internships that students working on their own would not have.
He said the company’s staff uses its personal connections at companies to get its clients the edge. Lochtefeld said the importance of an introduction should not be overlooked when applying for internships.
“Does any college student really, sincerely believe that their resume will stand out or get better consideration than an actual introduction would provide?” Lochtefeld said in the article.
Dan Cohen, a senior in criminology, said the service could end up being bad both for the students that use it and the companies that hire interns through the service.
“I think that an internship is something you should have to earn, rather than taking the easy way out and paying for it,” Cohen said. “Anybody can pay for an internship, and a company may end up hiring an unqualified candidate for the internship, just because that person paid for it. I don’t think that I would use a service like this one, because you shouldn’t have to spend money to make money.”
According to the AP article, University of Dreams placed 1,800 students with companies over the past four years.
While fees for some internship placement companies start at hundreds of dollars, University of Dreams charges between $6,499 and $8,999 for their services.
The majority of the internships are unpaid and the company arranges for students to receive course credit from their home universities. The company guarantees an internship in the field of the students’ choice or their money back.
Prices like these lead some people working with the University Career Center to wonder if the fee was really worth it, when students have the opportunity to use the Career Center’s services for free.
“We have over 800 internships listed, and we look into companies before we enter information. You know what you’re getting, because these companies have been around for a long time,” Career Center Director Carol Schroeder said. “My advice to students is that if they are wealthy and can come up with that kind of money, then they should go for it. But there are so many opportunities open to students that don’t cost them five cents.”
Shroeder questioned the reasoning behind paying a company to do what a student could do with a little effort.
