Having the right parent or connections was always an enormous help in making one's way in the world. But for the mythology of our Horatio Alger nation to exist, it needs a bedrock of truth. You can get into the top schools if you just have the right grades and a bustling extra-curricular life. If you bust your ass over summer and inbetween college and grad school, you'll build up the experience to get your foot in the door.
Oh wait, not if mommy and daddy now fork out thousands for the internship.
Ellen Gamerman's original piece on auctioning off summer internships is three years old, with parts of the narrative going back far longer. But as far as trends go, auctioning internships accelerated with the income divide in this country:
In the competitive world of summer internships, a new route to plum spots is emerging: buying them at auctions, often at elite private schools. This spring, internships at Morgan Stanley, NBC, Miramax, WebMD, Electronic Arts and a host of other companies have been put out to bid at auctions across the country. Bids often reach into the $2,000 to $5,000 range. Some internships are unpaid; in other cases the winners' kids receive a salary.
I remember writing a comment, long ago, about how people would flat out pay just to have their jobs soon. It seems that day has finally come. Now, internship sales is no longer simply a given, but a cottage industry, according to a January 28th article in the WSJ. "Internship-placement programs are seeing demand rise by 15% to 25% over a year ago".
I know many kossacks are going to understand immediately that a degree is not necessarily a golden ticket to one's dream career. Even with a relevant educational background it can very difficult to get a position without experience. For millions of 20 somethings and even Gen Xers, experience is not just plentiful fruit in an orchard, ready for the pluck:
For Gary Lucas, an internship at Electronic Arts was a chance for his son Scott to get a taste of life in the working world and beef up his résumé in the process. Mr. Lucas and his wife paid $4,000 at the Urban School's auction in San Francisco to win the spot, which was donated by William "Bing" Gordon, a board member of the school and co-founder of the gaming company. "Maybe this is just, like, my big pre-job," says Scott, 15, whose hobbies include computer programming.
Though most of the auction promotional materials describe these experiences as "internships," some companies say that's an exaggeration. "This was not an internship, but a mentoring or shadowing program," says Lindsay Nadler, senior manager of human resources at film studio Miramax, where a "summer internship" recently sold for $3,000 at the Montclair Art Musuem's charity auction in New Jersey. The item promised a two-week stint that included shadowing the film company's new president, Daniel Battsek, who donated it.
Pay-to-play education and employment is the bane of a resilient, middle-class country. As Timothy Noah writes in Slate:
Winning bidders were making generous charitable contributions (these items didn't go cheap), officially recognized as such by the Internal Revenue Service, which allowed a tax deduction for the bid amount spent in excess of market value. Within this tiny bubble of human interaction, all parties were doing good. Outside it, they were conspiring to make life even more of a rigged game than it already is.
Here's an actual, charitable internship auction. And there's many for Timmy and Sally, so hey, if you have 1 to 10 Gs lying around, go ahead and make use of the marvelous world of tax deductions!
Unfortunately, if opportunity is enshrined in our nation's code, this particular opportunity eludes at least 75% of America, probably more. Only a very minority group of Americans can even afford college without the financial aid system currently being gutted on the docks.
I love this country, I love not falling asleep worrying about marauding militias coming for me, as my ancestors once knew in Oregon. I love being able to mingle with the poor and the aristocracy. I love not having political parties officially dedicated to specific ethnic and religious groups. But sometimes, the CW can be so full of shit. And the belief that our education-industry system is so superior there's no point to fixing it is definitely one of them.
As Timothy Noah finishes writing about privilege in this country, he quotes a Brasilian saying:
"When shit acquires value the poor are born without assholes."
Who knew that the chance to work for beans or zilch would be worth its weight in gold?