A recent study conducted by Dr. Angus Holford has revealed concerning insights regarding unpaid internships and their impact on graduates’ career trajectories. The research tracked the progression of tens of thousands of students over a six-year period. It discovered that internships, largely unpaid internships, more often hurt graduates than help them in their career pursuits.
The research indicates that 38% of graduates who completed an internship did so primarily to experiment with the type of work involved. Although this sounds good, the results tell another story. Graduates who participated in internships typically earned, on average, £2,000 less than their peers who entered the workforce immediately after their studies. After 10 years, the wage gap increases to $181,000. Nearly all graduates that did an unpaid internship are in a poorer financial situation three years later than their peers who moved immediately into a paid job.
Additionally, the research underscores the fact that by accepting an internship, a new graduate may be postponing the start of their career. Dr Holford lamented that if you’re not able to secure employment immediately, you’ve lost the graduate intake. If so, then that window of opportunity has closed and you’ve missed the boat. If you wait several years to get promoted you can be quite a ways behind. Or you can find yourself accidentally diverted onto an entirely different career path. This delay can be permanent, affecting a graduate’s long-term career development.
The results show that graduates who pursued internships are at a great disadvantage in getting the best jobs. Internships are important experiential learning, but they can dictate professional opportunity. Interns were more likely to move into nonprofessional or nonmanagerial roles 15 percentage points less—compared with their colleagues who went on to graduate education. Their sense of job satisfaction suffered. The probability of them being extremely pleased with their profession decreased by 8.8 percentage points.
The disparities are especially glaring for those graduates who are from disadvantaged backgrounds. As a result, those people turned out to be over £4,000 poorer than their peers who started working straight out of university. This raises alarming questions about equity and access within the future job market.
Dr. Holford cautioned that while some graduates may find internships that lead them directly to their desired careers, this is not the norm. He stated, “I expect some people will find an internship that enables them to do the job they really want to do and that will have the big labour-market return but, on average, an internship you take won’t lead directly to a job in the profession you really wanted or the profession you did the internship in.”
The report found that graduates often entered professions not at all connected to their internship positions. This change makes their career trajectory more complex and changes what they can expect.