The "they're learning" argument is tired, convenient, and frankly a little embarrassing.
So let's just get into it, every time the conversation about paying interns comes up, somebody somewhere drags out the same old speech, that "But they are gaining experience! They are learning the industry! The company is investing in them!" and every time, it lands the exact same way , like a boss trying to pay their staff in exposure, which, by the way, nobody has ever successfully used to buy jollof rice.
Okay so here's the thing people conveniently forget, interns do work real work, not shadow work, not pretend work, not "sit in the corner and observe" work, they answer emails, run reports, manage schedules, handle clients, write content, build decks, and do a dozen other things that would otherwise fall on someone else's plate, the fact that they are also learning while doing it doesn't cancel out the labour , it just means they are doing two things at once, which, if anything, deserves more compensation, not less.
Think about it this way, a bricklayer who is also an apprentice still carries the bricks , the wall still goes up, you don't pay the wall less because the bricklayer was learning something on the job, The "learning is the payment" logic only ever gets applied downward, nobody tells a junior doctor that their salary should be waived because they are still picking up skills under supervision, bomb nobody tells a new hire at a bank that their first few months of figuring out the system counts as their compensation, but somehow, for interns , mostly young people, mostly broke, often fresh out of school and still paying off laptops they bought for their studies , it becomes perfectly reasonable to say, your time is not worth money.
And let's talk about what unpaid internships actually filter out, When companies don't pay, the only people who can afford to show up are the ones who already have support, financial backup, parents footing the bill, someone covering transport and feeding while they "gain experience." Everyone else, the brilliant ones who actually need the opportunity, quietly disappear, they cannot afford to work for free, So companies end up with a narrow slice of candidates and then wonder why diversity is a problem, Funny how that works.
Now, nobody is saying interns should be on the same salary scale as a ten year veteran, that argument is a strawman and we're not doing that here, the point is simple, pay something fair and honest, over transport, give them feeding allowance, pay a stipend that at least acknowledges that they left their house, gave you their time, used their energy, and contributed to your company, that is it, that's the whole ask.
Because at the end of the day, when a company refuses to pay its interns while simultaneously putting those interns' output in client deliverables, there's a word for that, It is not "mentorship." It's not "investment in the future workforce." Is exploitation polished up in corporate language and handed to a twenty one tear old with a smile and a certificate of participation.
Interns should be paid, not as charity. Not as a favour, because work has value, and value deserves to be compensated regardless ofx how much someone still has to learn.