Unpaid Intern Work Debated

The legality of unpaid internships at domestic, for-profit companies are under scrutiny the New York Times reported Friday, but this may not be a major issue for Harvard students seeking summer internships, according to Robin Mount, director of the Office of Career, Research, and International Opportunities.

Mount said 35 percent of internships in the OCS job database, Crimson Careers, are unpaid. She added that most of these are likely for non-profit organizations that can legally accept volunteer work or for firms abroad not covered by U.S. labor law.

Nationally, a number of states—including New York, California, and Oregon—have begun investigating and in some cases even fining employers who host unpaid interns.

Federal and Massachusetts labor laws include standards unpaid internships must meet to be exempt from federal and state minimum wage laws. According to the U.S. Department of Labor’s Wage and Hour Division, unpaid internships at for-profit firms must fulfill six criteria. Among them, the experience must offer vocational training and not provide “immediate advantage to the employer.”

Mount said OCS does not check if opportunities posted on Crimson Careers comply with minimum wage standards. “We’re not really in the business of scrutinizing all the internships that come to us,” she said. “It’s a sort of self-post system.”

OCS includes a disclaimer informing students that they are responsible for verifying the legitimacy and legality of the opportunities listed on their Web site.

Harvard students who do pursue unpaid domestic internships at for-profit companies may seek stipends from Harvard centers, such as the Institute of Politics. But, according to IOP Student Internship Chair Christopher W. Danello ’12, IOP Summer Stipend recipients do not generally work at for-profit companies.

A related problem that Harvard students seeking internships sometimes face is that some unpaid opportunities require students to receive academic credit in order to comply with minimum wage laws. Mount said that Harvard does not grant academic credit for internships, though students have arranged for independent studies with faculty in the past.