Most college students know that internships are one of the best ways to get their feet into door of the adult world. According to an April 2006 survey done by Vault.com, a popular website for internship advice, 84 percent of students complete an internship before they graduate. However only 64 percent of those who participated in the survey reported being paid.

Spending a semester doing work for no pay isn’t anyone’s idea of fun, but most students are so grateful for the opportunity that few decline such internships. The problem is a good portion of unpaid internships may actually be illegal.

With so many students competing for the chance to jump-start their careers, many employers find that the can get away with not paying their interns. After all, whose to report their boss when they’re hoping to score a full-time job out of the deal. To pacify the masses many employers offer college credit in exchange for the work their interns do for them. Since only one state, California, requires that college credit be given to students who are not being paid, many individuals consider themselves lucky.

This does not, however, exempt employers from the standards put forth by the Fair Labor Standards Act, a piece legislation that established safeguards for workers and created the federal minimum wage. According to the FLSA, there are only six conditions under which an intern is considered a “trainee,” a title which makes payment unnecessary.

According to Slate magazine’s Sonia Smith’s article “Internships for Credit are a Scam,” the two most important parts of this labor law are that an intern cannot do the same work that actual employees do, and the company responsible for the intern is not allowed to “obtain immediate advantage from the activities of the student.” Smith goes on to write that, because of this, unpaid internships that require the student to do clerical work, such as filing or photocopying, are illegal. In these cases the intern is handling work that is often done by those on the payroll and the employer has set up a situation where they are directly benefiting for the student’s work.

Despite the obvious illegality of many unpaid internships, the country’s capital city is one of the places where these programs are most popular. Due to the competitiveness for paid internship positions, many students are, for the most part, left with few options. One of the biggest problems with this system, aside from an employer having an unlikely visit from the Department of Labor, is the fact that many students cannot afford to work without pay. College is expensive enough without making students hold down jobs that don’t pay. Few employers realize that they, too, could be missing out by creating a situation where many talented potential employees are unable to consider positions with them.

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