The issue of pay for interns is both simple and complex, because it depends on the point of view and many factors. There are three ways to think about this issue.
The first would be analyzing the situation from the intern's point of view; for them, the income may be a necessity or a supplement for leisure. For the company, it may be an opportunity to mold an employee for a specific role. But generally, the best, win-win solution isn't found in the opposites; it's a middle ground between the two! Check it out!
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PAID INTERNS - INTERN VIEW
On one hand, some people may believe that interns shouldn't be well-paid because they are gaining experience, being mentored, and having their questions answered by people who are currently working in the market. From this perspective, if you consider why some people pay for courses and knowledge, why should the company that is teaching them how things work in practice, and depending on the profession, incurring equipment costs, also pay that intern?
Thinking this way, we even consider that interns should pay to work, because if they pay for college to learn the theory, why shouldn't they pay to learn the practical side?
PAID INTERNS - COMPANY VIEW
In a world where interns had the means, this might even make some sense, but it's worth remembering that many services and products offer discounts for students, precisely because they expect that these students/interns don't have significant purchasing power to pay the full price of the product/service.
Considering this, demanding that an intern, who often already has a very busy schedule because they study during one period and go to the internship during another, and the locations may be quite far apart, meaning there's also the commute time, pay to work wouldn't make sense, because they don't have the financial capacity for it.
PAID INTERNS - WIN-WIN SITUATION
Thinking about these two situations, a middle ground might be the most viable solution, since this intern needs the income to support themselves most of the time, to have a minimum of leisure time in the little free time they have left at the end of a busy week. If it's a public university student, it's very likely that they have to work to help with the household income, so if there isn't an internship that minimally remunerates them, there may not even be options for them to continue improving in the field through the internship practice or the theory they learn at university, because there's a need to look for a job that remunerates their time.
At the same time, thinking from the companies' perspective, it's not possible to demand that the salary be the same as what would be paid to someone already in the field, because if that were the case, it would be better for them to hire a fully qualified employee instead of training someone from scratch. A way to help both sides and reach a win-win solution, where both benefit, would be in two situations. The first is when the company has a development plan and needs an employee to mold the company culture from scratch, often for a specific position because they can't find an employee in that area on the market. The second would be to have an incentive with tax exemptions or reductions for companies that accept interns, since they are helping society as a whole in a way.
