Elizabeth ErionStudent Essay

Internship Program Falls Short

Elizabeth Erion drew on two valuable resources for her evaluation: her investigation of the campus internship program and her own experience as an intern. An earlier version of her essay appeared as an editorial in the campus student newspaper.

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Since its creation in 1978, the Coram Internship Program has been a mainstay of the Career Development Center. The program matches interested students—usually those entering their junior year—with companies offering paid summer employment. Participating companies vary by year but range from the Guggenheim Museum in New York to the Keck School of Medicine in Los Angeles. In 2011, the program placed thirteen students from the class of 2012 at eleven companies or organizations. While this statistic may at first sound impressive, it accounts for only 2.8% of the class of 2012. Given the popularity of summer internships to lead into one’s junior year, it is surprising that a higher percentage of the student body didn’t make use of such a seemingly excellent, paid opportunity. But the program’s low participation rate may be explained by one of its biggest flaws: its inherently restrictive nature.

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By offering funded opportunities at only a certain set of companies, the Coram program limits its utility to a certain set of students—those whose career interests match the industries and whose geographical options match the locations of companies participating during a particular summer. What’s more, certain locations and industries are heavily privileged over others. In 2012, nine of the fourteen companies were located in the Boston area. This regionalism is understandable given the college’s location in Maine and the high percentage of students and alumni from the Boston area, but it still represents a concerning lack of geographic diversity.

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Massachusetts natives probably would find this location far more doable than would students who hail from elsewhere. Local students might have the opportunity to live at home and save significant money (the program stipend does not cover living or travel expenses) or might have an easier time finding roommates or an apartment to sublet due to a strong network of friends and family in the area. They would incur no significant travel costs for a flight, a long train ride, or long-distance gas mileage to arrive and depart from their summer destination. A student from elsewhere who could not afford such expenses or who could not relocate for a personal reason—perhaps a family member who is ill—is at a disadvantage. If students were able to select the locations of their internships, they would be much more likely to participate in the program.

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Similarly, students are restricted to opportunities in a certain set of industries. Four of the participating programs in 2012 were in the financial services sector. Five were in science and medicine. Only one opportunity was available for students interested in museum work. The aspiring journalist is out of luck, as the program offers no journalism internships. So too is the student wishing to gain exposure to law firm work. These students are forced to look elsewhere, at both paid and unpaid opportunities. In many sectors—especially the arts—unpaid internships abound, usually located in prohibitively expensive metropolitan areas. Students who cannot afford to take unpaid internships are then left with no options, which jeopardizes their entry into the job market after graduating. Had the Coram program offered internships in the desired fields of such students, those students could have spent the summer attaining the experience they needed.

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The Coram Internship Program offers an excellent opportunity for the fortunate student who finds a good employment fit with a geographically convenient company. Unfortunately, the percentage of students who are able to find such a fit is prohibitively small, as illustrated by the program’s low participation rate. The program’s structure denies the chance of obtaining rewarding, paid opportunities to the majority of the college’s students, which is problematic given the importance of internships in gaining entry-level employment. Ultimately, the Coram Internship Program proves itself an ineffective career resource for a geographically and professionally diverse student community.

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