Views expressed in opinion columns are the author’s own.
Everyone has a part of their major they suffer through. Sometimes it’s a dry theory class, other times it may be a requisite statistics course. And sometimes, students pay hundreds of dollars in additional charges for no credit at all.
At the University of Maryland, education and journalism majors are required to complete a certain number of internships or achieve a particular number of internship hours. Education students dedicate a large amount of their sophomore, junior and senior years to experiencing hands-on learning at local schools. Journalism majors are expected to complete a journalism-related internship at some point in their college career after reaching a certain number of credit hours. The compulsory nature of the internships is not the issue, as they push students to have firsthand experience with their future careers.
The problem is that students have to pay to get to and from their internships on their own. Neither the university nor the individual schools provide students with funding for those multiple trips per week. Despite already paying tuition, students must pay out of pocket in order to cover transportation expenses. Students may take the Metro, drive their own vehicles or call an Uber every time they have to travel.
For journalism students, the money vacuum doesn’t stop with travel fees. Students must take a corequisite course with their internship, which means that if students do their internships over the summer or winter, they must pay for the course for that term as well. With either group, the overall result is revoltingly expensive.
Students are just that — students. Though many students may work during the school year, they shouldn’t have to pay for a required program that demands so much money on top of their regular academic purchases. And, just in case you were wondering, most education majors and most journalism majors aren’t paid for their internships. The compulsory programs siphon money from students’ accounts without replenishment. Students’ only compensation is one or two credits for work that far exceeds one to two credit hours.
So what’s the answer? Clearly, students should not have to pay, especially when the fields these students are going into are taken into account. Most education majors go on to become teachers, a position notorious for its low wages. The average starting salary for a journalism grad pursuing a career in journalism, reporting and media can be disheartening. Essentially, the university is forcing students to pay for a program that is necessary to earn their degrees, when it is unlikely they will be able to make up for the financial hit without difficulty.
This projected financial insecurity is the key difference between what’s happening here and the differential tuition for students in STEM and business programs. Though certain STEM and business programs demand increased tuition, students are typically guaranteed additional resources, private funding and higher pay as a result of their field of study. Education and journalism internships are mandating similar payments for transportation without the same benefits.
Students shouldn’t have to finance their own transportation for mandatory internships, and the internship hosts cannot be expected to provide students with money or vehicles either. Local schools likely do not have the extra funds to support undergraduate teaching students and many media productions struggle to stay alive. Alternatively, other internship hosts just do not want to pay students for their work. Either way, the internship programs themselves cannot be expected to provide for students’ transportation.
Ultimately, the solution comes down to the university. Money for students’ transportation could come from a multitude of places, from athletes’ motor scooters to the Cole Field House construction. If the university is going to require students to participate in an internship, it should be the university’s responsibility to ensure that students are able to do so.
Just as tuition covers obligatory coursework for other departments, it should cover these opportunities for education and journalism students as well. It is simply up to administrators of the university and individual schools to decide if they want college to promote students’ success or guarantee students’ pennilessness.
Jasmine Baten is a junior English major. She can be reached at jasminebaten137@gmail.com.
