Student Placements...AIBU to want to have at least my living and travel expenses paid?

[webbygeek91]

I am aware I am slightly different to your normal target audience as I came here for research purposes as part of a student project, but wondered whether anyone has any experience with undergraduate placement years for students?

AIBU to want to be paid to at least cover my living and travel expenses- I have probably applied to 500+ places now and the general assumption seems to be I should work for free, but the fact is, unless it is in immediate distance to my uni or home address, I would not be able to afford it, and would like to think organizations would appreciate the fact I value my own time and work. That doesn't mean to say I don't appreciate the valuable experience I will get, but still.

Maybe I am BU?

(I'm doing web design!)

Good for you. At least then you will have some experience under your belt. You could always get some unrelated paid work to bring a bit of money in too - though probably any job is hard to come by at the moment.

It's surprising though how any job can lead to another esp if you can show you were trusted and given some responsibility. I'm a lawyer now and did a fair bit of unpaid work experience in local firms when I could but I've also done bar work, waitressing, shop work, got some work experience in my mum's office which then let to some office work, once I had a bit of office experience I signed up as a temp and got an admin assistant job, then did some secretarial work as well...eventually I got a legal assistant type job, then I got a great evening admin job in an investment bank while I went to law school in the day.

I got my training contract not because of brilliant academics, that was ok but not outstanding, but I think because of all the work experience I had showed I was tenacious and prepared to work hard, plus having some direct experience for the role.

Good luck anyway

It is degree dependant isn't it?

My son has had two undergrad placements i.e internships, both paid a lump sum in advance of him starting towards relocation and housing costs, and both paid in excess of £700 a week salary.

I did this and my employer still offers places to 3 or 4 students a year. But there is never any financial help on offer. I was lucky - my parents could fund some of it, and I found somewhere incredibly cheap to live (by paying my way through child care for the family - teenagers, so mostly involved cooking if parents were going to be late, and just generally being there if needed) and earned a bit extra doing the odd evening job at the place of employment. I only know of one or two people in my whole year of 80 or so people who got paid or got expenses. Certanly it paid off for me - I got a job on the strength of the year and was there for 12 years. The place was a charity and just didn't have (and still doesn't) the funding to pay students. I saw it as me giving them free labour, but in return, I got a whole heap of things on my CV that I wouldn't have got at uni(eg public speaking skills), plus they put time into training me to do things - once I was an employee in charge of training students, I realised just how much it can take to train up a new student - the time you have to put in etc etc. Therein lies the cost to the organisation. I suspect that had they been forced to pay, even a minimum wage, the student placements would end - they are having a hard enough time trying to support staff, and students can be b**y hard work. If you get a good one, they are brilliant but we also had a few duds who certainly cost us in terms of resources to manage them and develop the skills necessary to do the job they were there to do.

Great responses, giving me a bit more of a insight :D

Bumpy :D

I feel your pain. Im studying law which after graduation is super competitive. I have a child, a mortgage and my DH earns 16k pa. We don't have spare money. I am looking at summer work and there is only ONE possibility in all of belfast that will pay you and even then I don't think they will. Others you're a free lackey. I have found a volunteering post and they are very nice and are willing to be very flexible with me re DD and childcare, but its in the city centre so I will have loads of parking transport etc. to consider as well as getting clothes to wear! My plan is to do a few hours a week volunteering and I'm an experienced legal secretary so will canvass solicitors with my CV to do holiday cover to earn a bit of cash. I am more than happy to do the volunteering post because i can do how many hours i want when i want, but there is no way i could afford to do a full time 3 month unpaid internship. the mummy and daddy bank has been closed for me for a long time. If i found an internship that even paid £100 pw i would be over the moon.

I'm sitting on the fence here. On the one hand, I can see how hard it would be to do the internship if you don't get paid. On the other, teachers aren't paid for their training placements and I don't think doctors or nurses are either, so I kind of wonder why web designers should be. Presumably you're entitled to a student loan? Could you also get paid work part time?

On a practical note, I thought your idea of writing to schools was good, but some of the ideas you put forward would actually create more work for already very overworked people. Perhaps you could think of something totally independent, but still beneficial to the organisations? E.g. creating an online store for a local charity shop, overhauling a school's external website (as opposed to VLE, which would need extensive teacher input) or designing website for local bars or restaurants. I'm not sure if any of these would count as 'placements' for uni though.

Surely your uni must offer some kind of financial support if the placement is mandatory? It would be really unfair if it was a case of 'oh you can't afford it. You can't finish your degree.' I had to complete a year abroad as part of my degree and got a small Erasmus grant which didn't go too far. However I went to see the finance department and explained that I didn't get any financial support from my parents etc and was elegible for a hardship grant which was an absolute life saver.

I don't think you are BU, maybe just unrealistic. As I said on another post, a lot of unpaid placements/internships do take the piss a bit, but unfortunately with the job market the way it is at the moment, anything you can do to boost your CV helps.

Yes, companies often save a LOT of money through unpaid interns, but it's not as if you aren't getting anything out of it. Experience and contacts can prove invaluable.

Good luck, I know how shit it can be.

Ok being realistic why pay you as unqualified inexperienced placement when there are many who've done the experience bit instead? Harsh yes but you will be in a better position in long run
fwiw my husbands company take 2 placements each yr and get paid less than trainees as not long term- but some of them are shocking really not expecting to work as they're 'stufents' still!! One got sacked for persistent lateness ffs!!

Bumpy.

When I did a work placement as part of university I had to pay my own expenses, I think we all did.

Undergraduate placement paid? honestly, I have never seen that, but that doesn't mean it is impossible.

I remember my undergraduate placement, if there was someone who should be paid for that placement, it surely wasn't me: I was slowing the processes with my lack of experience, crowding the staff with questions that interrupted their work all day long. And making mistakes or holding on taking decisions because I was not sure about my own judgement.

The only payment that I got was being able to put in my CV something that showed that I was not totally inexperienced. And for that I was more than grateful.

Now, my master's placement was paid, but by then I was playing at the same level as most people in the office, or a bit higher.

... and by the way, our placements were mandatory, there was no support from the university whatsoever, very few students in my postgraduate course were paid during their placement, and that was by the company (if they were nice)

I did a years paid placement during my course, all the placements available through the dept were paid. It was a bloody good uni though :) We were all high achieving, highly trained students, so bloody well should be paid.

A friend did programming, and spent his placement year being a chef and smoking weed! Towards the end of the year he got some work for a start up company, they paid well and he continued working for them through final year + after graduation.

It sounds like you have marketable skills and experience already - definitely worth a wage. How about setting yourself up as freelance? I understand this can be quite lucrative, you just need to find the jobs!
Good luck x

I feel you pain, really.

My student placement experience:
One horrific, overworked, full of unrembursed expenses, the other fully funded by me.

Oddly enough, my first, qualified paid work was in that placement that didn't pay anything towards my time there.

If I had my time over, I would only choose intern/placements that I was surely interested in as a future work option.

Can I say (hopefully it won't piss you off too much) that you are on a great journey, you have options, you have an educational path before you, etc. So try to look beyond the pain of paying for experience.

I'm surprised you are doing a web design degree tbh with all the cheaper options/easy web design programs out there for people in general. I have 3 friends that have gone back to school for degrees completely different because it isn't a very lucrative career anymore. However, if your internship is a part of your degree, I would think the school would be helping you get that internship and your expenses would be covered within your student loan. You should at least get a travel allowance from the placement. You can't be complete free labour. I think that is illegal or something.

Talk to an account on how you can 'right off' expenses when you do your year end taxes.

Accountant, I mean.

so is this placement part of your degree? if so, YABU, i did the teaching postgrad last year and did not expect the school to pay me for anything. do you not get support in terms of student grant etc? can you claim travel expenses back from uni?

We were high achieving, highly trained students atan RG university...we still weren't reimbursed. As it turned out I was given a lump sum at the end, but that was not contracted, more like a gift.

I do not get the student grant/second half of the maintenance loan (first half is for accomadation, the rest is means tested). However, that doesn't make me able to afford £70 a day commuting fees. I do not rely soley on my parents for income, I have complex neurological disabilities that mean I use my DLA to fund my living currently. (about £60 per week). Due to this I cannot drive legally and have to rely on public transport and taxis. The DLA comes to less than the means tested student grant (about £3500).

I wanted to be a journalist and that meant local paper and radio stations, then I took it further and spent Easter and Summer holidays at 17 in London - a 2 hour train ride from my house. I didn't get any money but I reall new it was competative so necessary. By 23 I was features editor and reaped the rewards.

(Am now 28 with dd1 and twins on the way - career on hold)

Web design is competative and the right placement and contacts are essential I'm afraid.

If you do midwifery you can be placed in hospitals an hour away, if you do teaching, again the schools you're placed at can be an hour or more away from your uni base. Who should pay your fees?

I think yabu to expect to be paid. Yes it is a possibility you have some knowledge and skills that an organisation doesn't already have and would benefit from but more realistically as an undergraduate you will be taking more from the organisation in terms of time and experience than they will be getting back.

And I say this as someone doing some unpaid consultancy work at postgraduate level where arguably I am doing a job rather than an internship and I have to pay my expenses (travel, resources, telecommunications, printing, childcare and huge uni fees) and put up with some pretty rubbish treatment from some employees of the organisation.

Try to think of the internship as what you will get out of it for the future because fabulous as you might be they were getting along ok without you and just won't care how wonderful you might be. You will only be worth investing in if they can see your skills and to do that you have to get a foot in the door. And in the current economic climate that might be an unpaid foot.

Take the hit now so you have a better chance of getting a job when you graduate.

Thanks guys :) Really appreciate your input.

YABU