American University Pledges Funds for Internships

Like many college students, Nasaiah Algarin and his peers want to gain experience through internships but are often drawn to work at nonprofit organizations that don’t always have funding to pay interns.

As a result, the third-year public relations and strategic communication student at American University said many of his peers struggle to sustain an internship while covering costs like housing near their work.

“One of my biggest worries was, ‘How am I going to afford this internship? How am I going to afford rent if it doesn’t pay enough to live in the city?’” said Algarin, a first-generation student.

To address concerns like Algarin’s, American recently launched a five-year strategic plan to strengthen students’ experiential learning and career preparation and outcomes, which includes the AU Ready program as a key component. The program guarantees every undergraduate student access to a $4,500 stipend for an unpaid or low-paid internship or research opportunity starting in their second year.

“It opens doors for all students at AU to pursue what they’re interested in without having to worry about whether they’ll be financially prepared,” Algarin said.

AU president Jonathan Alger said fully funding internships allows students to pursue a range of learning experiences, from nonprofit roles that may lack funding for interns to on-campus research opportunities.

“We wanted to very directly answer questions about the value and relevance of higher education in 2026,” Alger said. “We didn’t want students to have to choose between a paying job to afford their education and an internship that could be valuable for their long-term career interests.”

Vicky Wilkins, provost and chief academic officer at the university, said the program is designed to expand access to career-building opportunities for all students, particularly those who are lower income or first generation and may not otherwise be able to afford unpaid or low-paid internships.

“The accessibility comes on both sides. We wanted to speak to students who otherwise couldn’t take time away from work or couldn’t afford to be out of the job market to do an internship and make sure we were responding to their needs,” Wilkins said. “We also wanted to give organizations access to really talented AU students, in that we can help bring them together and provide them with interns, but also make sure that students get paid for that work.”

“We’ve always had a fund that helps our neediest students take advantage of internship opportunities, but that fund often closes the gap—covering things like travel, housing or even professional clothing—rather than funding the entire internship,” she added. “That’s why we wanted to make this commitment on top of those types of funds to say we really want them to have the opportunity to have a funded internship that’s going to sustain them and allow them to be where they want to be for the summer.”

A guaranteed investment: To date, Wilkins said, about 87 percent of AU students participate in internships, with roughly 70 percent of them paid—figures she said highlight both the strong participation rate and the need to close remaining gaps in access to compensated opportunities.

“We’re very proud of that, and we think that’s an important step toward job market outcomes for them,” Wilkins said, noting the goal is to have 95 percent of students participate in internships.

“But as we thought through the strategic plan and did our community work to build it, we wanted to address concerns students might have over the return on investment and how they might see the university investing in them,” she said.

In addition to the stipend, students also have access to other opportunities, including professional development courses and connections to mentors across the university’s faculty, staff and alumni network.

Other institutions nationwide have been embedding career-readiness initiatives into the student experience. The City University of New York recently launched CUNY Beyond, a systemwide effort to prioritize career exploration and outcomes by scaling practices shown to improve students’ employment prospects. The University of Virginia has also introduced the Career Design and Discovery Initiative, a collegewide push to integrate advising, academics and experiential learning.

“This is a priority,” Wilkins said. “When you look at our strategic plan, we’re doing a lot of things, but this is the big bet we’re placing. It builds on our history and how our students have differentiated themselves in the job market.”

Boosting career readiness: Wilkins understands why some higher ed leaders hesitate to frame workforce readiness as part of their mission, but she said AU’s initiative is less about changing that mission than about making clear what they’ve been doing all along.

“The mistake that people are making … is not stating their intention,” Wilkins said. “Our humanities and liberal arts education prepares you for careers. We just have to be explicit in showing how it does that.”

“The problem is we’ve stepped back and sometimes let people outside of a university define humanities and liberal arts as not skill building, as not something that is going to prepare you for a career,” she added.

Alger agreed, noting that a liberal arts education should balance broad-based learning with career-ready skills.

“It’s not an either-or, it’s a both-and,” Alger said. “Communication skills, information and data literacy, critical thinking and problem-solving—those are the fundamental skills that a liberal arts education builds across all majors.”

“That’s really been the lesson of our process in developing this strategic plan and how we’re thinking about it,” Wilkins added. “Our [AU Ready] pledge is a way to ensure students benefit from a liberal arts education that prepares them for careers.”

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