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Beyond the Hustle: Building Internships That Work for Young People

July 28, 2025 | Anne Stanton

A recent New York Times piece captured the experiences of college-age interns navigating the fast-paced world of New York City. The article delighted in youthful moments like waiting for pancakes, charming museum visitors with animal trivia, and feeling too nerdy for the club scene. Yet it left me reflecting on more serious concerns about how we’re preparing young people for meaningful careers.

Many of these internships were unpaid or dramatically underpaid—a harsh reality when you're trying to afford housing and transportation in one of the world’s most expensive cities. These young people were pressed into incredible juggling acts just to meet basic needs, all while navigating professional expectations without thoughtful structure and support we know benefits both emerging talent and the future workforce.

While I don’t know the educational backstories of these particular students, I’ll add one more general caution: By waiting until college to start work-based learning, we miss crucial opportunities to set young people up for success. When we engage them in career-related learning as early as middle school—starting with broad experiences like guest speakers and job shadows, then building toward more intensive experiences like internships—we prepare young people to make confident, informed choices about their educational and career paths. We help them develop the skills, behaviors, and mindsets that will serve them, their future employers, and society throughout their professional journeys.


The Value Young People Bring Is Real

It’s also important to dispel a persistent myth: that interns don't provide value worth paying for. To understand this value, it can help to look at the big picture.

Technology-driven change is creating new roles at breakneck speed while demanding continuous upskilling across industries. By 2040, one in four experienced workers will retire, creating massive workforce gaps that employers and everyone should be preparing for now.

California's economy—the fifth largest in the world—illustrates both the opportunity and the urgency. Over half of our private sector jobs are in the nation’s fastest-growing sectors, yet we're failing to engage a significant portion of our comparatively diverse and young workforce. Structural barriers—including lack of professional connections, transportation access, and the financial necessity of paid work—prevent us from developing this talent.

Some, but still far too few, employers are stepping up to partner with school communities, crafting the learning-integrated, supportive work-based learning experiences that students deserve and that our economy desperately needs. These partnerships recognize young people as emerging professionals whose contributions have real value and whose development requires genuine investment.

For example, the Kaiser Mentorship Pods program, a joint Linked Learning initiative of STEM Academy of Hollywood, the Kaiser Permanente Bernard J. Tyson School of Medicine, and the Kaiser Permanente Los Angeles Medical Center, neatly addresses the interests of students and its own: The initiative provides multi-layered mentorship, professional development, and long-term networking, all while expanding and diversifying the local healthcare workforce.

And Nickelodeon Animation partnered with LAUSD on a paid internship program called “The Dozen,” which involves students developing a Nickelodeon-branded show under the guidance of industry professionals, screening a trailer of their show to producers, and receiving feedback on their year-long project.

These are just a few examples resulting from a Linked Learning Alliance collaboration with the GPSN Internship Pilot—designed to increase the number of LA students of color and those living in poverty who complete high school internships. Through this effort, 195 LAUSD students have secured paid internships and jobs relevant to their learning journeys for this summer alone.


We Know What Works

The good news? We know how to create internships that work for everyone involved. Productive, rewarding internships share much in common with work experiences that attract, retain, and engage people throughout their careers. Building on insights from hundreds of Linked Learning pathways featuring work-based learning partnerships, we advocate for three essential elements:

  1. Mutually valuable experiences where internships provide fair compensation through stipends or an hourly minimum wage, work schedules and locations accommodate school attendance and transportation realities, and employers provide the technology and tools necessary for meaningful contribution.
  2. Supportive work culture where inclusive practices make interns genuine team members, coaching comes from both school and employer advisors, and steady communication flows through clear channels with proper guidance.
  3. Equitable labor conditions where projects and duties build meaningfully on interns’ knowledge, skills, and networks while advancing real employer goals, and where interns are considered and evaluated as prospective future hires.

These aren't idealistic aspirations—they're practical necessities that benefit everyone involved.


The Choice Is Ours

Young people deserve better than scrambling for basic needs while contributing their talents to organizations that can afford to pay them fairly. They deserve structured pathways that begin long before college, comprehensive support that extends beyond work assignments, and recognition of the real value they bring to the present and future workforce.

We have the evidence, the examples, and the expertise to build internship experiences worthy of their potential. The question isn't whether we can do better—it’s whether we will. Because when we invest in young people’s professional development with the same intentionality and respect we’d want for ourselves, everyone wins: students gain meaningful experience and financial stability, employers access diverse talent and fresh perspectives, and communities build stronger, more inclusive economies.

The hustle doesn't have to be about survival. It can be about opportunity, growth, and mutual benefit. But only if we choose to make it so.