Many students today strive to enter internships while in college. The programs can be demanding with little or nothing in the way of pay. While I was in law school I did internships with a New York State Supreme Court justice, the Richmond County District Attorney and the New York Stock Exchange and enjoyed every minute of it.
But the bottom line with these programs is that they can be a source of unpaid or expense free labor for corporations who may be abusing the system in order to enhance their work forces at little or no cost to their profit margins.
Yes, students in some cases receive college credit for the programs and have a lot of fun with the program and gain invaluable experience but so would a household slave working on a science project for Thomas Jefferson in 18th Century Virginia.
The point is that these programs are prone to abuse and may skirt our labor laws. Our legislators must take a hard look at these programs to ascertain if they are in some way a form of slavery and in need of regulation or that they are innocuous and best left alone. If problems are revealed through an investigation by the legislature then it should be remembered that these programs serve a purpose and should not be abolished but certainly regulated because this involves our children and the future of the nation and they should not be enslaved in any way.