All incoming freshmen or recently declared journalism and mass communication students are required to take an internship to fulfill their graduation requirements, according to Danny Paskin, assistant professor and journalism and mass communications department adviser.
The requirement, which will be instituted along with the current internship elective class in journalism, is to be composed of 120 total on-site working hours and one hour and 15 minutes of classroom time twice a week.
For some students, taking this class would require that they allocate some of their working hours toward completing an internship.
“They need to think about what they’re asking of students,” Debbie Kao, a communication studies major, said. “A lot of students don’t have the luxury to not have a job and having an internship would jeopardize earning money. I think the department needs to change it back to optional.”
Kao currently interns at LAX.
“I had to stop working as much, which sucks because I have all these payments,” Kao said.
Victoria Murphy is an NBC Universal Style Network intern. She said she has to rely on her parents because she dedicates all of her time to her unpaid internship.
“It’s hard to get another job because my internship takes up all my free time,” Murphy said. “Luckily, my parents work hard so they’re there to help me out, but it can be a burden to anyone to have a non-paying internship.”
Many students said they wouldn’t be able to accept an unpaid internship — even if it’s to their advantage.
“I just don’t have time in my busy schedule to work for free,” said Cesar Mondragon, a journalism major and creative writing minor. “I’m just hoping it doesn’t negatively affect me in the future.”
Emma Daugherty, who currently instructs the journalism internship course, said the university may grant an exception.
“You can be granted almost anything as an exception,” Daugherty said. “It doesn’t mean you’ll be granted, but a group of people — students and faculty — will look at it very seriously and, if you have a case, they often grant those.”
Paskin suggested a different solution.
“Sometimes we might have a little leeway if you get a job — a paying job that relates to media in some way — to compromise and say OK, we can use that for the internship,” Paskin said. “We’re just trying to stay away from the people who do jobs completely unrelated to media.”
According to Daugherty, if an internship employer advertises that it “offers credit,” that usually means the employer will cover the cost of the tuition for the course. She said the student must be an apprentice, and be closely supervised by an experienced individual.
This must be verified with the employer, however. If the employer says the internship “requires credit,” the student must pay the tuition for the course and work at the internship site for free.
“So, in actuality, the student is paying to work as an intern,” Daugherty said via email.
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