It’s not hard to see why students love London – bright lights, big city, all the promises of an exciting well-paid career ahead of you – and interning is usually the best way to get there. Interning is one of the most effective ways to enhance your CV (and get your foot in the door), but paid internships are decreasing at an alarming rate and it’s getting harder for students to support themselves.
In the arts sector, almost 90% of government-sponsored internship programmes were unpaid – with 75% of fashion and PR companies posting opportunities with absolutely no financial gain. Out of all the advertisements on the website 49% were paid and 33% offered expense schemes. It doesn’t look great on the companies, and it looks absolutely dreadful for the coalition’s internship drive as part of their ‘Opening Doors, Breaking Barriers’ strategy for increased-social mobility. Either way, if you don’t live in London and you can’t afford to put yourself up, you’re at a significant disadvantage.
Vision have spoken to a few students who have struggled to pay the bills of interning in London, either out of their own savings or with the aid of parents, or extended family. One third-year interned at charity project READ International for six-weeks this summer, which fell into the official category that requires an organisation to pay minimum wage.
Fortunately, I have family in London and I don’t have to pay for my transport, so I was really lucky as they expected me to travel around a lot. But there’s absolutely no way I would have been able to do it otherwise. In terms of a social life, it’s quite easy to get on guest-lists and things in London clubs but I understand how it would be really hard if you weren’t living in central London. What they ended up paying me was enough to travel outside of London, to eat and maintain a social life but I wouldn’t have been able to support myself.
Undoubtedly though, it’s the arts students who suffer the most – one of York’s hopeful journalists has undertaken work experience programmes at some of the top media companies in the country, and has never seen a penny for their efforts. It’s unquestionably easier if you live in London, and two of the five students interviewed interned within PR and government schemes received expenses, but when you’re commuting from elsewhere in the UK and looking at £40- upwards for a 3* hotel – the prospect of interning almost doesn’t seem worth it.
However, even expenses don’t always run smoothly. One student who interned with White Smoke Communications was promised to have their expenses paid, yet at the end of their time there still had a bank balance of £0. Whilst still being denied their rightful money, the student quit. In hindsight, though, the student came to the conclusion that the experience that they gathered at the company was worth more to them than what they gained in companies where they were actually paid. This leaves us in the dilemma of whether we can actually afford to get the experience we need.
As students money is tight and having an internship in London can be high risk although, we must bare in mind the experience gained is something that can’t be bought.