Responding to New York Times article

I just finished reading Hilary Stout's article "The Coveted but Elusive Summer Internship," in which she explained that the "Obama administration issued a fact sheet listing six criteria aimed at preventing employers from violating the Fair Labor Standards Act with their unpaid internship programs" in April. In response to that article I've written the following:

I'm all for government regulation of the FDA, oil and gas companies, and the like, but this is an area where government regulation could be harmful. I'm working as an unpaid intern at a non-profit news radio station this summer, and paying my university to get credit. Am I losing money? Right now yes, but that’s why I look at it more as an investment than anything else. At my university the journalism department doesn't have broadcast journalism classes. How else was I going to figure out if I wanted to pursue, or was even good at broadcast journalism without an internship?

Internships give students, such as me, the tools to make decisions about the kinds of careers they want. We're at the age when we're trying on every identity and considering every possibility. These internships teach us skills we can't learn in the classroom.

Requiring that an employer does not derive any benefit from an intern’s work is preposterous when any action one does can benefit another. Do my employers derive benefit from my work? I hope so. I hope they learn as much from me as I learn from them. Our economy, our country, and our world depend upon the cooperation and interaction between new and old ideas. In this era of economic turmoil the exchange of ideas and building up of "resume" experiences becomes that much more important.

There are a lot of things I can live without, but education, in the broadest sense of the word, is not one of them. I would gladly give up luxuries for the experience I'm gaining from this unpaid internship. I work hard. I don't fetch the coffee, or take out the trash, and I don't feel taken advantage of. Don't make it harder for me or any other student to have these experiences and learn the skills that will help make them better workers and citizens.

So there it is, whether the New York Times publishes this or not, I have said my piece.