A brief answer. They were slaves. or Serfs. or Peasants. Pick whatever term you prefer. There are plenty of 3rd world countries you could pick, should you be interested in personally returning to such a system.

Internships are little different from the classic apprenticeship under the Guild system. I’m sure you are familiar with the Guild system, it was such a great way of organizing labor that Antitrust is said (in large part) to have grown as a response to it. Guilds are also compared to Cartels, a word which carries many negative connotations. Structurally, they share many similarities.

In any event, the last of the Guilds here in America are perhaps best represented by State Bar Associations. You think not? Try practicing law without a license. I understand some in that cartel are advocating a return to unpaid internships due to the failures of our numerous law schools to produce students capable of actually practicing competently in the field.

But perhaps I misunderstood your yearning for the past?

Are you better at IT then someone with more formal education? I would not be at all surprised if you were. Twenty years in IT is a powerful statement on a resume. Why duplicate that by giving a degree for it? I already gave you credit for it when I looked at your resume. What exactly would the point be?

Anyone who writes a paper and says “This is dumb and meaningless” deserves an F in my opinion. You could have just taken the opportunity to write about what you have learned over the last 20 years and how it compares to what you have learned in school. There are a million positive things you could have done with it. Instead you made the obnoxious point that you should get educational credit because you have life experience without putting you out any further. Did you go to the professor first and say, “Hey, how should I write this given my situation?” If you had tried to be reasonable, you would not have had to go running to the dean in the first place.

A couple years ago, I was taking some classes at a local community college. They brought up the suggestion, that I was very close to an AS in IT, because of my “life experience”.

They required a 80 hour unpaid internship as part of all their degrees. Because of my non-compete clause with my employer, I couldn’t do the internship.

They (the college) agreed to let me do it with my employer, paid. Then demanded I write a report about how much I learned from my internship. I honestly wrote a report about how 2 weeks of work at the same job I have been doing for 10 years was unlikely to generate any new unique learning opportunities and this how thing was a meaningless paper exercise. The advisor tried to give me an “F” on my internship. I appealed. The dean overturned it and gave me an “A”. Told the advisor to loosen up and be more ready to give people working in their field more “life experience” credits rather than meaningless internships.

Most people are against gov’t keeping out of everything except the things that they personally want them to get involved in.

Internships favor rich kids? While I question the premise, let’s plow ahead and ban all things that help rich kids.

I don’t think it is disgusting when someone works for free. Usually they do so because they are getting something out of it. Why would anyone else want to devalue that and act like there cannot be mutual respect in such a situation? It seems unbelievably short sighted.

Amy, I appreciate your speech even if was painfully preachy. Seriously. You are doing right by your employee and right by yourself. It is the best way to keep good people and get the most out of them.

This case was decided on a legal issue. Is anyone really standing up and saying we should ban internships? I appreciate some of you don’t like them. But does anyone really support a law that does not allow consenting adults to enter into a intern-type situation?

I come on this blog mostly to argue with people – like Walter – who disagree with me on the extent to which we – and govt – are our brother’s keeper. But you people are forcing me to go be the Libertarian-in-Chief. And that is crazy.

I am a middle-class newspaper columnist and author with a part-time editorial assistant. I could have an “intern” — I could put an ad on Craigslist and have them lined up down the block begging to work for me for free. Paying somebody is the right thing to do if you are getting value from their labor. (Because you can have somebody for free doesn’t mean it’s right.)

And frankly, treating people as if they have value brings value. I not only pay the person who works for me, I mentor her. I shepherded her in entering a contest to be columnist (suggesting that she dump her idea for a column and take a couple of brilliant paragraphs she’d shown me about something unique she does and use them as the basis for a column instead). After she won the contest (to do the column for a year), I then spent hours editing each column she wrote. I continue to try to teach her things she needs to know about writing and the business and am now helping her pull together a book proposal out of her columns. All of this in addition to paying her.

And it pays off for me, as well. I have a loyal and dedicated employee with integrity in the way she does her work, and she is extremely valuable to me. She sees that I act with integrity toward her and it comes back to me.

So getting something for nothing isn’t always the great deal it seems to be.

Look, if you don’t like the deal, quit, don’t take it or whatever. Don’t take the stance that you can renegotiate after it turns out your opportunity was more valuable for the company than you like. So you had to do some menial tasks for the position, so wat? Those would be the tasks if were on the job. Would we be hearing this if the movie was a flop? Dunno, but it certainly seems opportunistic to say the least.

So glad I’ve got gummint to help decide for me. Do we even need contracts anymore?

“You want to pass a new law? First take ten of them off the books.”