Paid experience should be accessible: what internship research shows, and what it doesn't

Whether an internship pays can look like a detail. For many young people it decides whether the opportunity is usable at all. An unpaid role competes with the job that pays the rent, and even a paid role can carry hidden costs like transport or housing. This article walks through what the research says about paid and unpaid experience, carefully, because some of the most-quoted numbers are easy to overstate.

Do paid interns get more job offers?

NACE surveys graduating students every year. In its 2024 survey of students at four-year schools, paid interns reported an average of 1.01 job offers before graduation, compared with 0.66 for unpaid interns and 0.74 for students who did no internship at all ^[1]. Paid interns also reported a higher average starting salary: $68,041, versus $53,125 for unpaid interns and $55,924 for non-interns ^[1].

Two cautions matter here. First, these are average numbers of offers, not the share of students who received one, so it would be wrong to say paid interns are "X percent more likely" to get an offer. Second, they come from a survey, not an experiment. NACE itself notes that the likely driver of the unpaid-intern gap is field of study: "Approximately one-third of those who self-identified as unpaid interns were public service majors, which is among the lowest-paid majors" ^[2].

So the honest reading is not "unpaid internships hurt you." It is that paid experience tends to sit closer to the roles and industries where offers and salaries are higher, which is exactly why access to it matters.

Who gets access to paid experience?

Pay isn't evenly distributed. More than half of interns in NACE's 2024 survey, 57 percent, reported being paid ^[2]. But the split varies sharply by group. Among Class of 2023 graduating seniors who interned, 76.4 percent of men were paid, compared with 51.5 percent of women ^[3]. Among interns who received Pell Grants (a common indicator of financial need), 53.5 percent were paid, compared with 61.0 percent of interns who didn't receive Pell Grants ^[3].

Both comparisons are among students who already did an internship. They say nothing yet about the students who never got one, which is where the access problem is largest.

Why don't more students do internships?

Strada Education Foundation's analysis of the National Survey of College Internships looked at third- and fourth-year students. Most students who didn't participate in an internship said they wanted to but couldn't, more than six in ten at four-year institutions ^[4]. The obstacles were practical:

The same report notes that about one-third of four-year internships were unpaid, "and even paid internships sometimes require students to forgo wages or pay for additional transportation and/or housing" ^[4]. In other words, paying people is necessary but not sufficient. Schedules, location and clear expectations decide whether someone who needs to work can also take the opportunity.

How should paid experience programs be designed?

For a company building an early-talent or CSR program, the research suggests a few design principles:

• -Pay for every hour, transparently. State the hourly rate up front and never go below the local minimum wage.
• -Make the schedule workable. Part-time hours that fit around school or another job widen who can say yes.
• -Reduce hidden costs. Remote-friendly work, or covered transport where in-person time is needed.
• -Make the work real and supervised. Relevant experience is what employers weigh; supervision is what makes it safe and useful.
• -Leave people with evidence. Reviewed work samples and a reference turn hours into something they can show.

Altᵗ builds these in by default: apprentices are always paid, in our turnkey route at $18 an hour or the state minimum if higher, for part-time hours on a project a company is already running, with a Mentor who reviews their hours and work. It's one practical way to widen access to the kind of experience the data above says matters.