Hillary Clinton uses slave labor

[Elok]

While I hadn't thought of internships as a sort of peasant-filter before (just as a source of cheap, rights-free labor), it makes sense. A good portion of modern college graduates have learned essentially nothing career-relevant; if your career isn't law, medicine or something technical, your diploma tells an employer only that you come from a sufficiently affluent and middle-class background to get through college. This is a desirable trait in itself, since high schools these days tend to let more or less anyone graduate--you basically have to try to fail public schools. Hence just about every job these days requires a college degree, as a sort of not-a-****up certificate. Internships would tend to reinforce this filter.

[Hauldren Collider]

While I hadn't thought of internships as a sort of peasant-filter before (just as a source of cheap, rights-free labor), it makes sense. A good portion of modern college graduates have learned essentially nothing career-relevant; if your career isn't law, medicine or something technical

That's because unless the career is law, medicine, or something technical, there aren't any careers for any teachable skills to be relevant towards. At least teachable in a college format. I think high schools should focus on getting kids to work over the summer--our education system should put a higher priority than it does on apprenticeship. Particularly since two of the fields you mention, law and medicine, tend to have long phases after graduation which are effectively apprenticeships anyway.

[MRT144]

Unpaid internships would be a lot more valuable as work experience if people were allowed by law to accumulate useful work experience in them.

My frank opinion is that you should find a completely new line of work if you're stumbling across unpaid internships. Nobody ever offers unpaid engineering internships.

It's definitely something that falls more on reputation based professions than product based professions.

[kentonio]

That's because unless the career is law, medicine, or something technical, there aren't any careers for any teachable skills to be relevant towards. At least teachable in a college format.

What the actual **** are you talking about?

[MRT144]

That's because unless the career is law, medicine, or something technical, there aren't any careers for any teachable skills to be relevant towards. At least teachable in a college format. I think high schools should focus on getting kids to work over the summer--our education system should put a higher priority than it does on apprenticeship. Particularly since two of the fields you mention, law and medicine, tend to have long phases after graduation which are effectively apprenticeships anyway.

I think this is spot on and I like using myself as an example where an alternative track where there's room to grow allowed me to be the functional and useful member of society I am.

at 23 I was rudderless and just doing **** jobs that paid barely anything because I am a terrible lackadasical student who never was able to piece together more than 6 months of good academic work.

But my boss took a chance - we grew up about half an hour from one another, we both are college dropouts, we both get computers/networks/AD/etc etc but don't have technical training per se in it.

8 years later, I love my job and I look forward to taking the reigns of the director role by the end of 2016.

Basically those first 2-3 years were me learning how to do the job of a helpdesk monkey and do it well and the back 5 have been network admin and engineering. And it's been great! I've been able to take vacations, save money, put max in my 401k, given my wife the ability to seek out jobs she's interested in, meet some great people, all the things you could have hoped for.

And none of this would have happened if there had been a strict college degree policy in place for a job that really doesn't necessitate it and doesn't pay like it.

Credentialism really pisses me off because I think symbolic representation of knowledge isn't as valuable in a job as actual familiarity with SOPs and systems.

[Hauldren Collider]

I am convinced that the main thing that sets me apart from my peers in my age group is that my father forced me to get a job when I was 15. That job experience taught me more than anything I ever learned in school. School was important--I learned some really important skills in high school, and in college and I couldn't have gotten where I am without that--but I'm hitting the ground running on graduation because I have actual paid work experience in a relevant field and you learn things there that school can never hope to teach you.

The paid part is relevant because getting paid for something changes the entire dynamic. When you are getting paid, it means definitely that what you are doing is not for yourself, but for someone else. That changes everything. You have to focus on the value you are providing to other people. If what you are doing is volunteer, you may be doing tasks that benefit others, but the dynamic between the organization and you is still heavily focused on what they can provide to you and reasons other than money that they can give you to participate. The same thing is true of school--the work you do in school is for you, and because of that it can never really emulate what work is like in the real world.

[Ben Kenobi]

I would object to that categorization that volunteer work is about appeasing the volunteer.

I do agree with your point about compensation as a sign that you are providing actual value to the organization. I would also make the point that it would depend on the renewal of the contract, not the initial contract. Something which most internships wouldn't provide. So yes, it's good to get paid, but just because they were paid doesn't mean you provided value to the organization.

[Imran Siddiqui]

Particularly since two of the fields you mention, law and medicine, tend to have long phases after graduation which are effectively apprenticeships anyway.

The law (and I guess medicine) field is perfectly fine to have effective apprenticeships after schooling. Law schools weed out scores of potential lawyers and the ones that get through are the ones that firms feel are worth using time to train them.

But the point is that these firms don't want to apprentice people before law school or college. They want them already to have gotten past the whole thing - college teaches you to think more critically than you would in high school and law school is, as observed by many, how to think like a lawyer 101. And every step weeds out people.

[Hauldren Collider]

Law school can and should be a 4 year bachelor's degree instead of a graduate degree. It makes absolutely no sense to force lawyers to go through 4 years of undergrad before 3 years of law. In England it's just a 3 year bachelor's. Hell, JDs used to be LLBs. The B even stood for "bachelor".

[MRT144]

Law school can and should be a 4 year bachelor's degree instead of a graduate degree. It makes absolutely no sense to force lawyers to go through 4 years of undergrad before 3 years of law. In England it's just a 3 year bachelor's. Hell, JDs used to be LLBs. The B even stood for "bachelor".

But how will Universities get a sufficient cut...

Do I need to finish?

[rah]

And how could they justify charging what they do,

[Imran Siddiqui]

Like I said, it's a weeding out process. ABA is totally for legal education on top of college.

[MRT144]

Like I said, it's a weeding out process. ABA is totally for legal education on top of college.

I know we all joke about a world with less lawyers, but what if the solution is to make everyone drown in lawyers?

[regexcellent]

I'm skeptical of 4 years of bachelor's before med school too. There are 6 year med schools now, which is an improvement.

[Hauldren Collider]

Like I said, it's a weeding out process. ABA is totally for legal education on top of college.

Of course they are. It benefits them to make it harder to become a lawyer. Fewer lawyers = higher lawyer fees. The thing is, the curriculum in law school doesn't justify 4 years of undergrad.