Students and graduates "turned off" internships

Concerns about unpaid labour and lack of local opportunities are putting off students and graduates seeking internships and summer placements, according to a poll by the National Council for Work Experience (NCWE).

The survey of 1,165 students and graduates revealed that 82% are not aware of any schemes in their own region and three out of four (74%) are turned off applying for placements this summer because of concerns that they would have to work unpaid amidst rising levels of student debt.

Heather Collier, director of the NCWE says: “Graduates desperately need some work experience to add to their CV to make them a better prospect for employers, and with rising levels of unemployment this is vital. There are a lot of unpaid internships around at the moment, but there are also many paid placements, particularly locally. Work experience continues to be valuable, whether it is paid or not. Ultimately it is down to individuals to decide what their boundaries are to ensure they are not exploited.”

Workplace Law’s Work experience, internships and apprentices factsheet advises that employers should bear in mind that paid work experience staff are likely to be entitled to receive the national minimum wage (NMW). The NMW stipulates all workers are entitled to be paid NMW provided they are of school-leaving age or ordinarily work in the UK.

Genuine volunteers are not workers and are therefore not entitled to the NMW, but, for this exception to apply, the relationship must be properly voluntary in nature and not merely labelled as such in order to circumvent the requirements of the NMW. 

As well as volunteers, there are other circumstances when a work experience placement will not be entitled to the NMW. These include:

• Apprentices under the age of 19 or apprentices over the age of 19 who are in their first year of apprenticeship;
• Individuals who undertake work experience resulting from government work placements and schemes funded by the European Social Fund;
• Students carrying out work experience under the European Union’s Leonardo da Vinci programme; and
• Workers on a higher education course where part of the course is work experience, provided this experience does not exceed one year and is required by the course.