Education

Internships for Sale

By Cheri Hung — June 13, 2006 1 min read
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Internships can be great additions to college applications and give applicants an edge over other students. According to this June 10 Wall Street Journal article, in the never-ending attempt to help their children gain that edge, parents are now buying internships at fundraising auctions*.

Morgan Stanely, NBC, Miramax, WebMD, Electronic Arts and many other companies have all donated internships, usually to elite private schools. These internships can bring in big bucks for schools. For example, the Journal reports that the Brunswick School in Greenwich, Conn., raised more than $800,000 for its scholarship fund through its annual spring auction in which eight internships were offered for bid.

College administrators don’t ask how applicants obtained an internship, but assume that an "...internship normally is the result of some sort of initiative that the student has taken on his or her own behalf,” according to one admissions officer.

UK’s Guardian Unlimited also featured a similar article on NSPCC’s dream auction in May that auctioned off real work opportunities instead of internships.

*Link is to an article preview. Full article requires subscription to the Wall Street Journal online.

A version of this news article first appeared in the Around the Web blog.