Ugh, internships. Years ago I told my dad that I was going to take an internship, and he scoffed at the idea. In his classic liberal fashion, he criticized internships as a violation of the Constitution-the 13th Amendment to be exact. He told me that if I did work I should get paid for it; that's our system.

In these tough times, businesses are cutting back-apparently even on free labor-and internships are often as tough to get as a real job. In the business world, if a entry level job is in a highly desired field you can cut the salary of a fresh employee. Apply that same mentality to the world of internships and the next logical step becomes clear: charging interns.

Business have already picked up on this idea, and media companies are particularly heinous. Recently, the Wall Street Journal reported that "a one-week internship at a music-production company sold last month for $12,000."

How do they get away with this? The answer is two-fold. The first is that internships are hidden under the cloak of education. A student pays for college, shouldn't they also pay for the on-the-job training? While experience is invaluable, the situations aren't comparable. The university isn't benefiting from that paper you wrote for Political Science-the college doesn't need this essay to function-but that newspaper, magazine or record label certainly benefits from the fact that they don't have to pay someone to go through the busy work that their interns are doing.

Next, it seems these internships are provided by middlemen, who could theoretically be grabbing as much cash possible from both student AND employer. In that sense, at least the employer is paying someone for the work being done (though arguably less than they'd pay an actual employee). The student, however, still gets screwed, and it's worse than having to work for free...it's having to PAY for the privileged of working. Yikes. I certainly hope the rest of the economy never gets that bad. Ultimately, my dad was right. If you work, you should get paid for it, and interns aren't somehow exempt.