Unpaid Internships: A Modern-Day Scam or a “Learning Opportunity?”
Written by Miha Palancha. Graphic by Miha Palancha.
As a 19-something freshman at SCAD, I feel like I’m at the perfect starting point for the saga of unpaid work—the place where companies look at eager, bright-eyed students and think, “Ah yes, free labor.” It’s almost a rite of passage at this point, isn’t it? You put together a beautiful portfolio, spend hours writing the perfect cover letter, and then get hit with, “Unfortunately, this is an unpaid opportunity, but it’s a great learning experience!” Right. Because learning how to budget $0 for food, travel and the inescapable Adobe subscription is an essential life skill.
Look, I get the argument. Internships offer experience, networking opportunities and that golden resume booster. But let’s not act like experience pays the bills. The simple fact that unpaid internships exist means that some people can afford to work for free. People who don’t have to think about lunch money, transportation costs or the fact that, without a laptop and design software, their entire career path becomes an expensive dream. Not everyone has that luxury, and to pretend otherwise is either blissfully ignorant or straight-up cruel.
Let’s talk about the work itself. Interns aren’t sitting around shadowing someone all day, taking notes and absorbing knowledge by osmosis. We’re actually doing work: designing, editing, researching, social media managing, fetching coffee (if your internship is stuck in the 2010s). You can’t tell me that an intern’s work isn’t valuable when companies are out here using it in real-world projects. The worst part? Some places still have the audacity to say, “We could just do this on Canva.” Then why didn’t you? If a Canva template was all you needed, you wouldn’t have browsed through my portfolio and decided you wanted to work with me.
And that portfolio? It didn’t just appear out of thin air. No one wakes up one day magically knowing how to animate in After Effects or design an entire brand identity. These are skills that take years of learning, practice and refinement, skills that hold real value. If someone is willing to hire you, it means they see that value, which means you deserve to be compensated for it. So fight for that. Your work isn’t charity, and your talent isn’t a favor to the company hiring you. You earned your skillset, and you deserve to be paid accordingly.
Here’s the thing—learning comes in many ways, and working for free should not be one of them. Exposure doesn’t pay rent. A glowing LinkedIn recommendation doesn’t cover groceries. It’s basic human decency to pay people for their work, and if you can’t afford to do that, then maybe, just maybe, you shouldn’t be hiring interns at all.
