Apparently, students can survive on three things alone: instant noodles, caffeine and “valuable experience”. 

At least that’s the message employers seem to be sending when they advertise yet another unpaid internship, work placement or shadowing opportunity. The reward? Exposure. Networking. A foot in the door. Everything, it seems, except actual money. 

Students today are caught in a bizarre “no-win” situation. To get a job, you need experience. To get experience, you need a job. But before either of those, you’re expected to spend weeks or even months working for free. It’s the professional equivalent of being told you need swimming lessons before you’re allowed in the pool. 

The assumption behind unpaid work is that students can somehow absorb the cost. Yet many of us are already balancing lectures with part-time jobs, society commitments and the small matter of trying to afford rent. Maintenance loans barely cover the basics. Last time I checked, my landlord wasn’t accepting LinkedIn endorsements as payment. 

Of course, employers love to talk about opportunity. They’ll tell you how lucky you are to sit in on meetings, answer emails and make coffees for people who earn more in a week than your student loan stretches across a month. Somehow, this is framed as a privilege. 

The reality is that unpaid work creates a system where opportunities increasingly belong to those who can afford them. If your parents can bankroll a summer in London while you gain “industry experience”, brilliant. If not, you’re often left watching from the sidelines while someone else builds their CV. 

This is particularly obvious in industries such as journalism, media, politics and publishing. These sectors constantly discuss diversity and accessibility while quietly relying on free labour to keep the pipeline moving. It’s hard to build a workforce that reflects society when getting through the front door requires a financial safety net. 

Nobody is arguing that experience isn’t valuable. It is. But if a student’s work creates value for an organisation, then that student deserves to be paid. It’s a remarkably simple concept. 

Students shouldn’t have to choose between paying their bills and building their careers. Until employers stop treating free labour as a rite of passage, “opportunity” will remain a luxury many simply can’t afford. 

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