For an ambitious student eager to make a sprinting start in the corporate race, an internship is rather like a bad girlfriend: you look around and you think everyone else has got one, you see one you like, you chase her for so long, but then when you finally get her you’re left to wonder whether it was really worth all the fuss.

Countless young people find themselves scrambling for internships they believe will be “good for the CV”, parroting that horrible phrase which seems to suggest that as we grow up our only worthwhile experiences are those we can summarise in a couple of lines in a Word document and expand upon at some mediocre firm’s assessment day, like the presidency of some two-bit student society or a position on the lacrosse club committee.

Such internships are sometimes of very limited practical value. Working on odd jobs with graduate recruiters for two or three weeks, they promise “recruits” the experience of life in their working environment rather than any kind of real hands-on training. They are almost universally unpaid. In other cases however, whilst not gaining proper training, interns may be doing substantial research work at the level of some full-time employees, but without any remuneration for their efforts.

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More and more attention has been given to the myriad problems surrounding the issue, both by politicians and the press. Nick Clegg yesterday announced the end of both the Whitehall old boy network and of unpaid Liberal Democrat internships. The Tabloids gleefully took the opportunity to rake over his own highly privileged work experience history. During the Labour leadership campaign, Andy Burnham singled out the BBC as a culprit, lamenting the numbers of young people working at the corporation for lengthy periods without pay. He says it is “not fair to them, but more importantly it excludes many others who simply don’t have the means to support themselves”.

The issue is one of fairness, as exemplified by the popular response to the revelations that the Conservative Party recently auctioned off a prime PR internship to its top donors at a fundraising event. Admittedly, stories such as the last one are more bewildering than scandalizing: why would any of the patrons of an exclusive Tory banquet even need to pay when they can scroll down their phonebook and ring up any one of their City friends for mere pennies?

One campaign group has been pursuing the cause long before it became a political hot potato. Intern Aware advocates “fair access” to the internship system, and believes this is best achieved by mandating companies to pay their interns at least the minimum wage – something which they insist is already legally required of them. Oxford student Ben Lyons is the Co-Director of the organisation; he says that ultimately the aim of the campaign is not “about giving interns pocket money, rewarding them for their work” but a matter of “acknowledging the need to make opportunities available for all”, and ensuring that “employment rights apply to everyone”.

This is sweet and wholesome talk, but for many it is flawed at best, and catastrophic at worst. To require a company by law to pay its interns the minimum wage is a burdensome regulation, to be sure; but moreover, it could simply mean that they stop offering any placements to interns at all.

Having a wealthy family gives some students the support they need so that they can pursue an unpaid internship rather than spend the summer working in the local Waterstone’s or Pret A Manger for some extra coin. Similarly they can provide a base in London where the best opportunities are located. This is not “fair”, but forcing business to redress this social inequality by paying their interns risks losing the opportunities altogether, so that everyone loses out.

Intern Aware’s Ben Lyons admits to the risk, going as far as to concede that the number of internship opportunities may well diminish if companies are required more strictly to pay their charges. However he goes on: “Interns provide something valuable to an employer.” An internship is “a high-level interview which gives both the employer and the intern a sense of whether they belong with the company and have the talent to be there”.

Jonathan Black, Director of the Oxford University Careers Service, agrees that “larger companies see internships as an extended interview”. This, he says, “allows interns to really understand the employer. I suspect the work that interns do at these employers is not hugely critical but is more likely to be valuable preparation work for senior staff.”

For the large firms which recruit graduates and set them on structured career paths, making internships a valuable and worthwhile experience is in their interest. It will enable them to attract and train potential recruits from a younger age, as well as to give them a more rewarding training experience as part of their internship, which will ultimately bring them back to that company in the long-run.

Hungry for CV sustenance

Surely it is far better to invest in raw talent by paying people than to throw thousands of pounds in sponsorship at university societies to try and grab some attention in the milkround, or on condescendingly shoddy gimmicks such as giving away toys, gadgets, or branded Valentine’s Day balloons (what better way to say ‘I love you’ than to give a girl a red heart-shaped balloon with ‘PWC’ printed across it?). By investing their significant resources in young talent, firms will be attracting the best future stars and keeping them for good.

However as Mr Black notes, “Most large employers – such as recruit at Oxford – will pay interns because of their HR policies, the law, and possible adverse publicity of not paying. Most of the internships on our system are paid.”

But he goes on to say, “There are clearly some sectors, e.g. media, where there is a tradition not to pay interns.” Some professions, of course, are not set up in such a way that makes this possible. Aspiring journalists, for example, must build up their experience and put together a portfolio of work. Freelancing is commonplace, and contracts typically short-term. Work experience placements are by and large given to students who are already signed up to media studies degrees or exorbitant postgraduate journalism courses. The media is a complex theatre: the advocates of paid internships run the risk of coming along like scriptwriters who simply don’t know the actors or the stage.

“If the media and similar employers were forced to pay national minimum wage it is very likely they would reduce the number of opportunities,” Mr Black says. “They will argue that there is no shortage of candidates to work for nothing, and no shortage when it comes to filling permanent roles.”

However it is similarly in the interests of media corporations to take on potential future recruits and embrace them into their working environment early on. Paid work experience programmes at regional and national newspapers or broadcasters could become the gold standard for potential reporters, and a real opportunity for the best and brightest – not just for those who know someone who went to school with someone who once sat next to someone at a dinner party, as jobs in the media so often seem to work today. If a national newspaper trains up a young and keen journo, then as well as a hot long-term prospect they also have a content-creator and a contact loyal to them. In a profession where established media institutions are having their traditional business model threatened by "citizen journalism" - manifested by the explosion in blogging, personal broadcasting and independent news websites - the role of an intern may be transformed: paid for the duration of their placement before maintaining a mutually beneficial relationship as a kind of citizen journalist for the institution.

What about the small local businesses across the country which offer opportunities to young people to gain experience they can call upon as they pursue a full-time job? Surely they can have neither the financial resources nor the sizable human resources department necessary to pay their work experience students and provide them with much in the way of training.

Again, this is the instinctive reaction but it is fundamentally against the spirit of a business operating in a free market. If a company cannot afford the staff it takes on in order to do the work needed to run its operations, then there is something very badly wrong with its business model. Lyons points to MPs with limited staff allowances, think tanks and charitable organisations that pay the living wage to their interns because they believe it is right. He admits that providing for interns “may be more difficult for smaller companies”. However, he says, “Internships provide talent for any company as well as new perspectives.” This has to be of value in any business operation.

Furthermore, Jonathan Black adds, “Smaller companies and the employers that offer internships through our OU International Internship Program (all of which pay at least travel and board and lodging) will give interns more critical work,” in contrast to the less crucial responsibilities he believes are given by large firms. If this is true, then those smaller companies surely have a responsibility to pay their charges for the work they contribute.

Ultimately, there is a sound business case for paid internships. Moreover there is a strong moral one which goes beyond the familiar rhetoric of fairness. Opportunity is the value at the heart of the current discussion; ensuring that individuals are able to look after themselves. Paying an intern a wage is a good practice, and encourages a healthy habit and attitude towards work from a young age. It makes them valued, gives them genuine responsibility in the workplace, and promotes the importance of earning one’s way with diligent effort.

It is no quick and easy fix to the problems of social mobility that limit the prospects and indeed the self-confidence of the northern state school pupil or the East End youngster looking for work without any qualifications to their name. It will take considerably more than £4.92 per hour for a student from Newcastle or Manchester to relocate to London for a summer placement, so the argument that it will boost access clearly has its limitations. Moreover, paying an intern is no guarantee that he or she will accept a job offer from that company years down the line.

But offering paid internships is a worthwhile opportunity for business to reform its own approach to work experience and training, as well as its recruitment strategies and relationships. If firms are held more strictly to a requirement to pay their interns, it need not be the case that they simply close off the opportunities they already offer. Rather they should take it as a chance to offer stronger and more worthwhile opportunities which are rewarding both for the intern and for the firm itself.

At a time when school leavers are bound to consider with far more scrutiny what direction they want to take their lives and their careers, businesses have to do more than simply turn up at university careers fairs and cherry-pick the graduates with the best CV points. They have to build a relationship with their future recruits from early on, and show a proper respect for them and their work. The ones that seize the initiative will be the ones that thrive.