What’s an Unpaid Internship Worth Anyway?
With all the attention being paid in the last week to the value of unpaid internships, NACE, the National Association of Colleges and Employers set about to determine what the relative value of each is.
The results will be issued in the full report in the fall, but the preliminary results can be found here.
The organization’s 2013 Student Survey found that 63.1 percent of paid interns received at least one job offer. Only 37% of unpaid interns got a job offer. And that was marginally better than those who had no internship experience at all. There 35.2% received at least one job offer.
When it comes to salary the results are even starker. Paid interns did significantly better than other applicants. The median starting salary for new grad with paid internship experience is $51,930—far outdistancing their counterparts with an unpaid internship ($35,721) or no internship experience ($37,087).
To be sure there are likely disparities between those industries that offer paid internships and those that do not.
Tags: career choice, Careers, job creation, job seekers, National Association of Colleges and Employers
