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That post would have made a lot of really good points, but for the fact that the rest of the developed world educates its population to degree-level pretty drat affordably.
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Mar 31, 2014 21:01
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Halisnacks posted:That post would have made a lot of really good points, but for the fact that the rest of the developed world educates its population to degree-level pretty drat affordably. So everyone in England can go to Oxford? Everyone in France can study math or engineering? They have much more restrictive systems which can really limit opportunity to those who do not test well. Now you can argue making that 17 year old take a test to open or close that door is a better way but it is still far from perfect.
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Mar 31, 2014 21:21
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Everyone in England can afford to go to Oxford (even after they tripled!! tuition fees) without taking on lifelong, crippling, non-dischargeable debt, yes. Can everyone be admitted? No that'd be absurd. Also how are A-levels in England any more restrictive than the SATs? They make awful teen movies about how goddamn meaningful that test is for Americans' futures.
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Mar 31, 2014 21:53
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Halisnacks posted:Everyone in England can afford to go to Oxford (even after they tripled!! tuition fees) without taking on lifelong, crippling, non-dischargeable debt, yes. I don't know anything about A-levels, but SATs/ACTs aren't restrictive at all. They typically just determine how prestigious of a school you can get into. If you get a crappy math score on your SAT or ACT but are still above a school's minimum overall score, then you can still major in math, no problem. Maybe some schools might have extra rules restricting you, but there are a lot of schools, and if you want to be an engineer after just barely passing your math and science classes in high school, that's perfectly fine. Just find a lovely public school in East Bumfuck, Nowhere with an engineering program and you'll be fine.
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Mar 31, 2014 22:12
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Halisnacks posted:Everyone in England can afford to go to Oxford (even after they tripled!! tuition fees) without taking on lifelong, crippling, non-dischargeable debt, yes. It is more flexible In the US it is possible go to Harvard with SAT scores in the 70'th percentile. http://features.thecrimson.com/2013/frosh-survey/admissions.html http://media.collegeboard.com/digitalServices/pdf/research/SAT-Percentile-Ranks-Composite-CR-M-W-2013.pdf
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Mar 31, 2014 22:14
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EN Bullshit posted:I don't know anything about A-levels, but SATs/ACTs aren't restrictive at all. They typically just determine how prestigious of a school you can get into. If you get a crappy math score on your SAT or ACT but are still above a school's minimum overall score, then you can still major in math, no problem. This is generally the case with A-levels as well. If you pass a requisite amount of them, you'll get into university somewhere (perhaps for as little as £3,000 a year), though yes, only the top students generally are getting into Oxford, Cambridge, LSE, etc. J4Gently posted:It is more flexible Perhaps it's more flexible because it is in the school's interest to admit more people who are willing to pay them six figures to attend? Oxford has finite spaces available and can only charge a maximum of £9,000, so yes, they'll only go for the brightest applicants. Anyway I'll admit that social mobility in the UK sucks, but the US is the second worst in the OECD. If you think paying manifold tuition is worth being slightly better at social mobility as a society, go right ahead. For what it's worth France and Canada (and everywhere else in the OECD that isn't the UK) have greater social mobility than the US and their young people are generally not becoming indentured servants to pay for their education. It's almost as though abusively high tuition fees hurt rather than help social mobility. Funny that.
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Mar 31, 2014 23:10
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Halisnacks posted:This is generally the case with A-levels as well. If you pass a requisite amount of them, you'll get into university somewhere (perhaps for as little as £3,000 a year), though yes, only the top students generally are getting into Oxford, Cambridge, LSE, etc. Yes, but I think his point is that in the US, different majors don't generally have different entrance requirements.
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Mar 31, 2014 23:28
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J4Gently posted:It is more flexible Halisnacks posted:Perhaps it's more flexible because it is in the school's interest to admit more people who are willing to pay them six figures to attend? Oxford has finite spaces available and can only charge a maximum of £9,000, so yes, they'll only go for the brightest applicants. I wouldn't call the US more flexible -- Harvard accepts <6% of applicants. The people getting in with those scores are probably like, legacy minorities who also founded a non profit and live in Rwanda. That's more than 3x as selective as Oxford, FWIW. top tier uni educations are definitely more accessible in the UK, both in terms of price and difficulty of admission to the very best. That being said, I'm sure plenty of Durham and Sheffield grads get awesome educations too.
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Apr 1, 2014 00:02
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Xandu posted:Yes, but I think his point is that in the US, different majors don't generally have different entrance requirements. Different colleges do, though, and at elite ones it's definitely by major.
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Apr 1, 2014 04:32
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Halisnacks posted:This is generally the case with A-levels as well. If you pass a requisite amount of them, you'll get into university somewhere (perhaps for as little as £3,000 a year), though yes, only the top students generally are getting into Oxford, Cambridge, LSE, etc. Another fallacy is that every student pays full price at US universities, there is significant assistance, particularly at the elite/large schools and particularly for those hoping to be upwardly mobile (average and below average wage earning families). To keep with the Harvard/Oxford comparison, for the average needs based student(65% of students at Harvard) Oxford is about 30% more expensive. For the other 35% do you really want to subsidize the rich kids? quote:UNDERGRADUATE COST AND FINANCIAL AID Also many states have lower cost state school options. UC Berklee for example a great state school in Califronia In State tuition 2013: $12,864 Out of State tuition: $35,742 Again I'm not saying the US system is anything close to perfect (The posts above highlight those problems) but there are some good parts of the system the main one being for those lucky/gifted/hard working few they can work their way into a better life there is no strict barrier that says you can't do this. The problem for average majority of students is choosing an expensive school thinking it is a guarantee to a $100,000+/yr job is plain wrong. There is not guarantee of anything and to reach that level of economic achievement takes additional hard work and opportunity/luck.
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Apr 1, 2014 14:00
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J4Gently posted:
The US has the second-worst social mobility in the OECD. If what you're saying is true, by implication Americans are less gifted and hardworking than their developed-country peers. Is that the conclusion you'd like to reach? Edit: to avoid derail, I've only had three (paid) interns work for me, but boy do they work. Two got offered full-time jobs after (one accepted), and I'll be offering the current one a job for sure. It's basically a protracted, year-long interview process where you learn what you can't in a normal interview - if you work well with someone.
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Apr 1, 2014 21:37
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I think we can all agree that the best system is the one that pigeonholes kids into what job they can do and whether or not they can even go to college from a test they took when they were 10 years old.
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Apr 1, 2014 22:20
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I graduate with my masters in September and a lot of us are scrambling around looking for our next job. On top of the usual graduate schemes etc I've been looking at internships, particularly overseas (I'm from the UK) as I'd like to work as a developmental economist. It certainly looks like a buyer's market for these organisations. In my email inbox I've been receiving occasional messages about internships in China, India, Ghana, etc. What I find kind of horrifying/ amusing is that they require I pay them money to go work for them, unpaid. These promotional mails come from genuine jobseekers websites so I'm fairly sure they're legit, but does anyone have practical experience of them? I have to assume joining one would be a terrible idea, if these places needed work done and valued your skills they wouldn't be charging you money to work for them. For example, the Ghanaian scheme charged over twice their annual GDP per capita to accommodate interns for four weeks. Every promotional image is of people in the pub or someone crossing a rope bridge, it doesn't look like anyone went within 100 yards of an office at any point. Are these internships scams/ holidays?
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Apr 1, 2014 23:07
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It's not exactly a scam, but it's pretty bullshit. Go find some academic doing development research in one of these countries that needs a research assistant.
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Apr 1, 2014 23:13
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I hate interns in my office but because of some government tax break program we have to keep them in from time to time. Yes, they are young, they are eager, and they want to learn, but they also tend to be morons. Most of their work is actually sub par and they can't even photocopy things and file things correctly. When you call them out for doing a bad job they just crack and fall apart. Ugh, such a waste of time. But it's nice to have some younger kids in the office. Doesn't make everything so drab.
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Apr 4, 2014 10:06
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I suppose this question belongs here: I just got hired by a local company as an engineering intern. The pay isn't very great ($12/hr, since it's a small company), but it's also part time during the school year so I would have the chance to work on longer term projects. I have two years left of university after this year, and I'll have the opportunity to work there until I graduate, with the possibility of being hired on immediately out of school. My question is, should I be limiting myself to a single company for the rest of my degree, albeit a longer term one with more and more responsibility (and pay!) as I take more classes? If I decide to not work for this company after school, would other employers prefer to see a variety of internships with different companies instead of a single company, or would the fact that I would be working there continuously through school be seen as more beneficial?
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Apr 7, 2014 05:46
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Sugary Carnival posted:Had an unpaid internship last summer, but it was for college credit so I actually had to pay tuition to be there. Some of the work I did was stuff I'm pretty sure benefitted the company in that it was work clients were paying for. I guess I was supposed to get critique and feedback on stuff I was doing, but that didn't really happen. What do you goons make of this, without me having to go more into detail? (Really I think all I achieved that summer was embarrassing myself, incidentally...) If it was a for-profit company, then that internship was illegal, period - regardless of whether you got feedback or grades from it. The DoL's position is that if the company profits from your work, then you are an employee and must be paid as one, period, no matter how much involvement the school may have had. The legality of unpaid internships becomes a lot simpler when you realize that there's really no such thing as an "intern" as far as labor law is concerned. There's just "unpaid workers" and "employees". No special distinctions or regulations for interns at all. Aside from the legalities, you certainly got shafted. You demonstrated that your labor was worthless by providing it for free to a company that happily exploited you for their own profit without giving you even the mere pittance of words you had been promised.
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Apr 7, 2014 09:47
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Well, I struck out on all my internships. I didn't expect anyone to grab me since I'm a freshman but it was worth a shot. Guess I'm taking a regular old job this summer.
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Apr 7, 2014 17:56
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Are state agencies exempt from paying interns as well? I am shooting for an internship with my state's EPA equivalent and I am fairly certain it is unpaid.
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Apr 7, 2014 19:53
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Massasoit posted:Are state agencies exempt from paying interns as well? I am shooting for an internship with my state's EPA equivalent and I am fairly certain it is unpaid. It's pretty frequent that gov't agencies are exempt from labor laws either de facto or de jure. For example: the district of columbia has practically 0 labor laws.
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Apr 7, 2014 22:08
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Anyone have an idea of the availability of paid IT internships in the DC area? Looking at development, security, or database work as my primary area of interests, but really I'd settle for any paid IT internship.
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Apr 9, 2014 21:31
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Managed to get an offer today from an Energy company making about $6000 a month, thank god. I was confident I'd struck out everywhere but it'll be good to get the experience and money.
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Apr 10, 2014 01:14
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Massasoit posted:Are state agencies exempt from paying interns as well? I am shooting for an internship with my state's EPA equivalent and I am fairly certain it is unpaid. They shouldn't be, since the FLSA applies to state and local government agencies as well, but there's lots of weird little exemptions in public jobs that I've so far been unable to find the details of and at least one relates to state agencies in some way, so it's possible that specific job might be exempted. However, the only government organization that has a blanket exemption from paying interns is Congress itself.
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Apr 11, 2014 04:24
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If you're an unpaid intern, you're probably better off just biting the bullet and getting reamed in the rear end. Contesting the legality of the employment terms and having your name out there as a litigant is likely to get you blackballed by a lot of employers/recruiters whether full-time or internships. Wasn't there a case in NYC where some college kid did exactly that and became unemployable?
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Apr 11, 2014 06:02
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Tots posted:Anyone have an idea of the availability of paid IT internships in the DC area? Looking at development, security, or database work as my primary area of interests, but really I'd settle for any paid IT internship. You have a chance since you have specialized skills in an in-demand field, but generally the internship market in DC is uncompensated.
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Apr 15, 2014 15:34
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kaishek posted:I am in employer of unpaid interns in the non-profit sector in DC - happy to answer any questions. Yes, I do feel bad about it. Do you ever take on interns who have already been out of school, are older, and looking to adjust their career path?
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Apr 20, 2014 21:05
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This is my last week at my current minimum wage (7.40/hr  ) internship. I got hired for a summer internship at one of the best companies in the state that begins on the 5th, and I'm praying third time's the charm in terms of actually learning and doing.In the last three weeks, four people have quit. Before that, my boss fired our photographer and then the web designer, who I was working for, putting me in charge of everything. Our new photographer quit after only two weeks, our graphic designer quit, our videographer quit, and then one of our financial persons quit. I'm out the door this week. I've barely learned anything here despite a promise that I would not spend all hours doing nothing. I mean I did a bunch of research (I will be so happy to know that the next time I look at houses, it will be with the intention to buy them) but no actual coding or design. I wrote a few blogs, too so I guess there's that. Even though I only got compensated a little, it was better than nothing. Looking forward to the real compensation I'll be getting at my new position, which runs the length of about thirteen weeks or so. But yes, definitely better to just deal with the unpaid aspect, as much as it sucks. It's way too easy to get your name smeared even though you are legally correct.
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Apr 22, 2014 13:09
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Honestly, if I had to choose between paying interns and just not having them, it's the latter every time.
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May 10, 2014 17:28
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FieryBalrog posted:Honestly, if I had to choose between paying interns and just not having them, it's the latter every time. I think the point for most internships is to get a relationship built with students so that when they graduate they work for you, as well as to train them during that period. It's cheaper to pay to train a student than a college grad, plus it's lower risk to hire one as if they're poo poo you just don't take them back.
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May 10, 2014 21:43
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FieryBalrog posted:Honestly, if I had to choose between paying interns and just not having them, it's the latter every time.
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May 10, 2014 23:25
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Not all unpaid internships are horrible. If you cast your net wide enough you occasionally find a gem - I found one in DC working for the government. While I am not compensated, I do get to use MY LIBERAL ARTS DEGREE in a real capacity, and my boss says he considers me to be doing work befitting a GS 7. I already have a writing credit I can put down on my CV. At the end of this gig, I'll have hit the all-important "1 Year Working At Grade" milestone. It pretty much all depends on your boss. If your boss wants you to get something out of the internship, they have the potential to give you a lot even if none of it is money. My advice is to look at absolutely everything and anything that could possibly need labor - this internship was sorely needed and barely advertised because it was on the initiative of basically one guy.
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May 15, 2014 01:32
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So if you were doing that in private industry it would be illegal not to pay you.
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May 15, 2014 13:55
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ChosenbytheZetans posted:Do you ever take on interns who have already been out of school, are older, and looking to adjust their career path? Sorry for the delay in answering this - the answer is "sort of". In general, I am hesitant to do this because it creates a weird office dynamic. 15 kids just out of college, and one 35 year old changing careers is a weird dynamic. That said, if I find someone good I am all ears - but the bar is higher. If you have a JD, MA, PhD and want to intern for me, my first thought is "they won't stick around". The cover letter should up front acknowledge that you are not the usual applicant and explain to me why you are doing this. It should also tell me why it will help ME not just you. I see too many cover letters that only talk about why the internship is great for THEM. I like hiring people who will get something out of it, but at the end of the day I need a job filled so I need to know that you can do it. I almost hired one person like this last term, but the sticking point was that because I can only hire one person for myself, I desperately need language ability, and this person didn't have it.
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May 15, 2014 16:16
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kaishek posted:Sorry for the delay in answering this - the answer is "sort of". Do you not know what an intern is? "Won't stick around?" "Only talk about how the job benefits THEM in the cover letter?" http://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/intern You're not even paying the interns! Christ, I'm happy I'd never have to deal with someone like you with hiring power
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May 16, 2014 04:49
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mishaq posted:Do you not know what an intern is? "Won't stick around?" "Only talk about how the job benefits THEM in the cover letter?"
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May 16, 2014 14:20
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swenblack posted:In my line of work, internships are basically a way of screening talent. We just hired our paid intern from two years ago because she is awesome. She never even looked for other jobs and she had a guaranteed job the day after she graduated with relocation expenses, industry standard pay, and decent benefits. In exchange for about $10k up front, I got a team member who I can guarantee gets along with everyone and is highly motivated. It's hard to see the down side, especially compared to the nightmare scenario of a bad hire. We do this at my firm too. Probably 30% of junior staff come out of our summer intern program. Of course, they're expected to do associate-level work (within reason).
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May 16, 2014 14:37
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kaishek posted:It should also tell me why it will help ME not just you. I see too many cover letters that only talk about why the internship is great for THEM. I like hiring people who will get something out of it, but at the end of the day I need a job filled so I need to know that you can do it. Internships are only supposed to be good for THEM. In fact, in the private market, it's literally required that the internship only provides something for the employee, and nothing at all for the employer. I know that as a DC nonprofit, your company is exempt from those rules, but that kind of thing is why you come off as tone deaf and get people's hackles up when you complain about how those selfish unpaid workers are only thinking of themselves and THEIR needs when they offer to work for free for you.
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May 18, 2014 21:58
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Main Paineframe posted:Internships are only supposed to be good for THEM. In fact, in the private market, it's literally required that the internship only provides something for the employee, and nothing at all for the employer. I know that as a DC nonprofit, your company is exempt from those rules, but that kind of thing is why you come off as tone deaf and get people's hackles up when you complain about how those selfish unpaid workers are only thinking of themselves and THEIR needs when they offer to work for free for you. Here's a real life example, courtesy of my kids earlier today. Both my three year old and my five year old separately asked to play video games on my iPad. When I asked why I should give it to them, my three year old said because she wanted to. My five year old told me he'd sit quietly if I did. Do you see the difference in the maturity level and the relative likelihood in getting what they were asking for? Someone who insists on getting what they want because they want it has the emotional intelligence of a toddler. It's absolutely mind-boggling to me that this is a difficult concept for some people.
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May 18, 2014 22:25
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Main Paineframe posted:Internships are only supposed to be good for THEM. In fact, in the private market, it's literally required that the internship only provides something for the employee, and nothing at all for the employer. I know that as a DC nonprofit, your company is exempt from those rules, but that kind of thing is why you come off as tone deaf and get people's hackles up when you complain about how those selfish unpaid workers are only thinking of themselves and THEIR needs when they offer to work for free for you. As long as you pay them you can get plenty as the employer. Really unpaid internships are BS and should just be removed.
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May 18, 2014 22:45
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What I find dodgy is the uncertainty with the "tentative" period of unpaid work. If you know that you will work for slave wages for a year and get hired on board after doing well then I see nothing wrong in that. If you work for a few months and your employer just dangles you the carrot of paid work then I find that bad taste. If your employer lets you know that it's a temporary time with no possibility of hiring then I don't see the wrong in that.
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May 20, 2014 09:06
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