Many schools today require students to work without pay for companies as part of their education. Is this more advantageous to students or companies?

Sample 1:

An increasing number of schools are forcing students to do unpaid internships with companies as a graduation requirement. In my opinion, this measure generally benefits students more than companies.

On the one hand, companies receive free labour. Every company, whether it is an international conglomerate or a small local business, must balance expenses against revenue in hopes of turning a profit. One of the largest operating expenses is labour and having unpaid volunteers from a nearby school helps companies carve out a larger profit margin. For example, a local supermarket could use high school students to help with bagging groceries, collecting carts, stocking shelves and potentially even manning the cash registers. The savings from this labour can make a sizeable difference for companies as long as they have simple, manual positions that require little training, and schools are willing to offer up students for these monotonous jobs.

On the other hand, students will generally not want to do simple, manual labour but work in a more interesting field, where they might be more of a hindrance than a help. A hypothetical example of this would be a student who has a keen interest in a given field, such as film-making, landing an internship with a local television station. In this high-pressured, skilled environment, an experienced employee will have to be charged with training and supervising a student who is unlikely to remain long with the company. This unpaid trainee will probably struggle to make much of a positive difference since the learning curve on skilled work is steep and the consequences for making mistakes can be serious. The student will learn a lot of useful skills, but the company should see this as a form of charity, rather than a boon for their bottom line.

In conclusion, compulsory unpaid work for companies usually benefits students as they have a lot to learn, and companies must invest in training. These positions are chances for students to become acclimated to the working world and not simply free manual labour.