In a world where education meets exploitation, three voices emerge from Syria and Lebanon, exposing the harsh realities of university internships. Join Jenan, Bachar, and Hala as they navigate a system plagued by financial constraints, lack of practical experience, and unpaid labor.

Jenan Aljendi, Syria

© private I never had the chance to pick the university I want to study at. I am a daughter of the working class. My dad did not have enough money, nor any property he could sell to get me through a good university that actually cares about the knowledge its students produce. For this reason, I studied in a state university.

I started my academic career like any other new student. We had complex courses, devoid of any practical application and designed to make us memorize as much information as possible. We were like parrots memorizing everything in its minute details without any idea on how we would apply this information in our actual professional life.

I remember well how happy I was when one of our professors volunteered to teach us how to prune trees with our hands and how to watch them and nurture them, until they produced their delicious fruits. However, my happiness came to an end as soon as I realized that my chances of getting hold of a pruning shear are less than one percent due to the large number of students. The scorching sun, the scarcity of equipment, and absence of safety measures were additional problems. This was the moment when I realized that there was no way I would get the practical learning that would give me the necessary experience to enter the labor market.

On the research level, professors used to ask us to join research seminars. We would choose a specific topic to search for in detail and note them down, but without any proper methods that would make our research actually “academic.” I remember how I cried when I saw that the research report I worked on for several nights was sitting in the trash waiting for the fire to eat it up.

Our universities are not responsible for integrating us into the labor market by training us at companies and institutions where we can gain experience. The role of university is limited to giving us a degree without any practical experience that would facilitate our entry into the market.

I realized that there was no way for me to learn sufficiently at this university. So, I looked for ways to gain experiences and knowledge that would benefit me in my uncertain future. I threw myself at any opportunity that would make me a good agricultural engineer. Sometimes I worked in agricultural lands with low wages, and sometimes I tried to learn about agricultural engineering design programs.

But time caught up with me, as our universities exhausted their students with long schedules that couldn’t be avoided. As a result of my work outside the university, my academic career was affected and I failed an entire academic year. But after moving past the mental state I was in, I realized it was actually possible to do more.

Now that I have graduated from the university with a good chunk of experience in my pocket, I say that what we went through was difficult to overcome, and that creating solutions as soon as possible may prevent students from dropping out of universities. For example, it is important to integrate the practical aspect and emphasize its importance to make the educational process more enjoyable and beneficial. In addition to urging the Ministry of Education in Syria to make an effort to change and modify the educational systems. This is what keeps the students within their academic tracks, not the useless, vociferous campaigns that blame the students and burden them with what they are not responsible for.
 

Bachar Bzeih, Lebanon

© private Internships have become an unavoidable requirement for most university students in the country. They are marketed to students as an “opportunity” to immerse themselves in the labour market and get some real world experience, but they’re often far from that.

In both the Arts and STEM, academic discussion can often get incredibly theoretical and detached from practical application. So the appeal of getting down into the rough and tumble of the real world experience is understandable. However, the issue with university internships is the way programs and administrators have laid them out.

For starters, internships are mandatory to most degree programs, meaning that your entire academic progress could be put on hold in case you fail to do a month or two of unpaid labour. Then, universities usually provide little assistance in the search for these internships, leaving students vulnerable and exposed to increased exploitation. And finally, to add fuel to the fire, some programs require you to take the internship as a 1 or 2 credit summer “course,” meaning that you pay the university for the opportunity to work for free.

When I had to do my internship, I had to pay for a 1-credit course to go to a company that really didn’t have anything for me to do. What it did do was open my eyes to the mundanity and violent boredom that rules the job market.

You could say that that means the university actually prepared me well for entry to the job market. That this process sounds just as bad as going through the whole job search charade, and you would not be wrong. However, universities are in a unique position where they can influence the dynamics of this market. It takes 1 or 2 universities deciding to mandate that their students’ internships must be paid for the situation to change. If universities actually aim to deliver quality education and real-world experience to their students, why not start by showing them how they can actually change the world around them?
 

Hala Alshmi, Lebanon

© private Many businesses depend on the unpaid or under-compensated labor of students who are trying to fulfill their graduation requirements or kick start their CVs to do the work that nobody else wants to do. An often year-round dependency on this easily exploited demographic helps these businesses reduce costs while also making students feel like they’re being given a learning opportunity.

In addition to providing their unpaid labor, many interns are also expected to fund their own transportation, which is especially problematic during the economic and fuel crises in Lebanon. For most, it is simply unaffordable to be making trips to the office on a regular basis. The businesses typically justify that by saying they do not “have the budget” to either pay interns or cover their transportation costs. This is hardly an excuse considering that interns are producing value for these businesses, essentially, it is a legal, well-dressed form of wage theft. 

While many students struggle through this system, for others it is simply not viable to be spending their days working without pay. In this way, unpaid internships perpetuate privilege. While they are often a requirement for access to a paid job market, they exclude those who can’t afford to do them in the first place and leave them stuck. To make matters worse, the job market is being polluted by unpaid ‘internships’ that specifically ask for graduates, defeating their alleged purpose.

Jenan

In Syrian state education, in my major specifically, the lack of any practical experience makes the degree not worth the paper it's printed on.

Bachar

I agree that theoretical knowledge needs to be supplemented with some practical experience.

Hala

But practical experience can be problematic when given in the current internship format.

Bachar

Universities should work to actually make companies pay interns

Hala

Helping change the working conditions of interns will also help the health of the overall job market.

Jenan

Yes, you both make good points, practical experience is valuable but it cannot come at the expense of our wellbeing.

 

July 2023