If the price is right | The Triangle

If the price is right

Landing a paid co-op can be quintessential for Drexel students, but sometimes it happens that the opportunities students are most interested in
are unpaid.

Currently, a group of co-op coordinators at Drexel’s Steinbright Career Development Center (SCDC) are working with employers to turn unpaid co-ops into paid ones via fundraising efforts.

The team also actively helps companies that can’t afford to pay co-ops to think of other benefits that appeal to students.

At this point, more than 152 individual jobs have gone from unpaid to offering
some compensation.

This is great news, especially for those who run into unpaid co-ops more frequently in the application process.

Less than 50 percent of the co-op positions offered are unpaid in the following majors: hospitality management, sports management, anthropology, criminology & justice studies, environmental studies & sustainability, environmental studies & sustainability, Psychology, English, international area studies, photography, music industry, game art & production, film and video, fashion design, entertainment & arts management, design
and merchandising.

While the number of
unpaid co-ops within the system is currently at 20 percent (and this percentage is expected to continue to decline with new fundraising effort) it becomes very clear when searching through the SCDC system that most students who end up applying for these unpaid co-ops are not in STEM fields.

While it is understandable that not all companies have the resources to provide paid co-ops, including many non-profits, it is concerning that some majors at Drexel are more unlikely to procure a paying co-op than others, and it is exciting that SCDC is working
to rectify this.