Last month, President Obama signed the massive financial regulation bill, which in a kind of legislative footnote, created a federal Office of Financial Literacy. While I applaud the intent to take financial education seriously, I am skeptical about the impact of the new office (to say nothing of the regulation). It may help older consumers learn about saving, credit, debt, and wealth building, but it doesn’t address a real need: educating the next generation of consumers, entrepreneurs, and investors.

America needs financial education. Students don’t know what “compound interest” means and parents are generally not prepared to teach them. The impulse to do something about this emerges every few years. In 1995, Jump$tart, a non-profit that was to lead in financial education was formed. In 2003, the Financial Literacy and Education Improvement Act created the Financial Literacy and Education Commission. In 2008, President George W. Bush established the President’s Advisory Council on Financial Literacy.

But these efforts did nothing to ward off the propensity of Americans to buy homes they could not afford. The lack of thoughtful dialogue related to the new financial regulation bill was itself scary evidence that many legislators’ own financial fluency is so inadequate that they had NO IDEA what the bill they voted on really does. A quick Google search of “financial education programs” produces a staggering 34.3 million results—there is no lack of programming. Anyone can get financial education, some of it very good, free of cost.

America faces two problems in regard to financial education that the new office is unlikely to impact. The first is a deep ambivalence about the very concept of financial education. “Buyer beware” is integral to the American psyche, reflecting a roguish attitude that each of us is fair game, literally. Capitalism thrives on the foolishness of others and REALLY creating a citizenry of responsible savers who live sustainably and buy judiciously goes against something deep in our national identity.

Indeed, the current worry that Americans aren’t “buying enough,” even as we fret about rising unemployment and houses under water, demonstrates the schizophrenia that no one, certainly not a government office of financial literacy, is prepared to tackle.

The second problem works in league with the first: the acquisition of basic financial fluency is not a “remember these three tips” kind of process. More akin to learning new languages or gaining skill as an athlete than learning how to frost a cake, the process involves the mastery of a new vocabulary in the context of a family’s specific values. This is a tough sell in an “instant” culture.

Ultimately, protecting assets—financial or human—is all about paying attention. “Buyer beware” is actually a great piece of wisdom, but thought leader families are getting proactive: Buyer BE AWARE is the new attitude. Thought leader families are now paying attention to the financial education of family members. They are not being prodded by a government office, but by their own informed self-interest. Financial education is economic self-defense and it is this consciousness that will help us rebuild an “in-the black” nation, not another Office.

With my best,
Joline

The first day of Fashion and Finance NYC was dazzling. The group gathered at the Westin Times Square for a kick-off and saw the complete agenda for the first time. People are here for different reasons: young ladies in high school are exploring life possibilities; college women are investigating career options; moms are thinking about ‘next chapters’; and they are all using the retreat to build fluency and understanding about the business side of the fashion industry.

I’m heading off to day two, but wanted to give you a taste of two gems from the first day:

• Going up in the elevator in an old building in the Garment District, one is unprepared for the grandeur awaiting when the elevator opens up on the 7th floor of the Naeem and Ranjana Khan studios. Facing doors appropriate to a grand palace, we rang the bell and were ushered into what is best described as a palace/loft: sumptuous, beautiful, and oh so very coooool. Ranjana and Naeem are both stars in the world of fashion: her extraordinary jewelry is in the finest boutiques and his couture clients include Michele Obama. Over tea and macaroons we saw their work, learned about their processes, and talked about the challenges of fashion in today’s environment. And can I mention we all left with really juicy jewelry? (NO, not that JUICY, I mean, really, juicy, yummy, great on my body jewelry.).

• Dinner: Howard Milstein hosted dinner at another ‘drop dead’ property—this time, a penthouse overlooking Central Park. The night was warm, the sun, didn’t set until after nine, and the conversation sparkled. Helping along in that department, four experts opened the conversation with stories about their work and lives in the industry. What a group of stars:

• WSJ Reporter, Project Runway Judge, and investigative journalist Teri Agins told her story (she knows where all the bodies are hidden in fashion!)
• Oriana DiNella, from Gilt, gave a what’s-the-latest-in-fashion-industry update
• Ann Johnson, formerly with Claire’s and Macy’s, offered insight into the retail world
• Betsy Hilfiger shared hysterical stories about growing up in a family of nine kids, starting Tommy’s first store in Elmyra, NY, and gave hints of the studio visit we’re on our way to right now…

I’ll put some photos up later today or early next week. Have to run, more later…

It’s the season for wise counsel. Countless toasts are being crafted for newlyweds and new grads. The letter I am sharing here must be one of the most moving that will be heard this year.

My friend Larry Kerr is a former Army Ranger and career diplomat with the U.S. Foreign Service, serving in posts around the world, including Chile, Mexico, and the Republic of Georgia. He was Assistant Professor of Grand Strategy at the National Defense University. He is also a poet and a musician, singing with the Bainbridge Chorale on Bainbridge Island, near Seattle. In his ‘retirement’ he has been teaching history at West Sound Academy.

Recently, the teachers at the school were asked to write a letter to the seniors. The letters were produced in a booklet for each senior to receive at his/her graduation. This is Larry’s letter. It’s a moving story, worth sharing with anyone facing a rite of passage.

Bainbridge Island
Memorial Day 2010

Dear Senior,

Years ago I heard a story of courage and friendship about two men I had never met.  It was a gift.

In 1967, a helicopter dropped into a forest landing zone, depositing six soldiers to begin a long-range reconnaissance patrol.  As the helicopter began its ascent, machinegun, rocket and rifle fire swept the clearing.  Four members of the patrol, mercenary tribesmen, were killed in the initial attack.  The remaining two, Americans, escaped in the chaos caused by the answering fire of accompanying American aircraft.

Stedman was the patrol leader, twenty-six years old, from Bisbee, Arizona.  He was half-supporting, half-dragging a wounded buddy, Willie, twenty-three, from Cement City, Pennsylvania.  They ran for three days while smart, tough-minded men tried to help them evade the enemy and reach an evacuation site.  Stedman became something of a legend in those three days.  In his radio transmissions he was calm, focused, and positive – almost cheerful.

Nothing worked.  On the fourth day, Stedman radioed that Willie could go no farther; he needed immediate medical care. The enemy could be heard searching close-by.

Leave him, his superiors told Stedman.  Slip away.  The enemy will find Willie and take care of him.

Stedman keyed his microphone for the last time. ‘I guess I’ll just stay here with Willie and see what happens,’ he answered.   Half a lifetime later, we still don’t know what happened.”

I met Stedman’s father in 1971.  I told him that his son’s his decision to stay with his friend was incredibly brave, an inspiration to all who heard the story.  He gave me a small smile, and spoke.

“That’s the thing about Stedman.  It wasn’t about the decision.  I would bet there wasn’t any decision, as far as he was concerned.  Staying with his friend was what Stedman was, who he was.  You know, I don’t think he had a fight after he reached ten, but he never backed down from anything.  He worked hard at everything, really worked that boy.  He never cheated or worried about being cheated.”  We were both near tears when he said, “My boy could no more have walked away from his friend than he could have flown away.”

So what does this have to do with you and me?  Well, although we barely know one another, I offer this story as something of value.  It reminds me, and I think of it often, that if I can make myself the person I want to be, I will be capable of doing the things I want to and must do.

John Barth wrote “Everyone is necessarily the hero of his own life story.”  I would amend that to say we are necessarily the protagonists in our own life stories.  If we want to be heroes, we have to will ourselves, transform ourselves, recreate ourselves as heroes.

Your adventure is outside, warming up.  There is no certainty, of course, that you will be undefeated.  After all, adventure comes without guaranteed results.  You can decide, however, to be undaunted.

Sincere best wishes,

Larry Kerr

I just heard from one of the presenters at our upcoming Fashion and Finance NYC retreat (there are a couple of open spots for the June 24-26 event, if you want to join us). Claire Meunier and her mother are going to do a joint session on the “Extreme Networking” it took for Claire to get established after earning an MBA from one of the top schools in the country. Their story is compelling and instructive. More than 16 percent of 20 to 24-year are unemployed and, short of a miracle, I am not feeling Pollyanna-ish about a big improvement anytime soon. The economy is undergoing a massive restructuring that no one wants to talk about.  But more on that another day.

Not Enough:

At Fashion and Finance NYC (June 24-26) we about the "Extreme Social Networking" it takes to get great jobs now.

Claire and her mother are going to talk about what it took for Claire to land on her feet in a meaningful position, commensurate with her experience and education. It took Claire almost a year of relentless conversations, meetings, inquiries, reminders, letters, emails, more meetings, and outreach to everyone she had ever met in her life (You think I’m kidding; I’m not.) She understood she had to build a vast web of relationships—REAL relationships, not just Facebook friends or LinkedIn connections. She had to be relentlessly tenacious. She was and she succeeded. And her parents, used to a world in which hard work and a good track record are rewarded, had to adapt to the new environment their daughter faced.

Claire’s story is an important one because in many ways she had EVERYthing going for her: a great experience, top level education, supportive family, intellect, sense of humor, and social network that was already strong. Even with all those assets, her journey was challenging.

The implications for kids who don’t have such resources, or who are not prepared to attack the quest for meaningful, sustaining work are significant. Without Herculean effort, many young people will be left out of the pool for ‘great work’. And if they are counting on less challenging work where they can ‘get by’ they are still in trouble. Those entry-level jobs that used to soak up the energy of American kids are shrinking. Think of all the ticket booths, airline jobs, and retail functions once manned and womanned by actual people, now handled by bank ATMS, airline kiosks, self-service restaurants and electronic touch screens. The entry-level world that launched millions of boomers is vanishing.

Everyone coming to Fashion and Finance next week will enjoy the mother/daughter tale of how Claire got ‘launched.’ I plan to reprise my ‘Launch Webinar’ later this summer and will include stories from their presentation. This new economy requires that families manage their ‘human capital’ with a new attention to developing entrepreneurial kids with extreme networking skills and the capacity to build authentic relationships that will help them find a place in this new and changing economic web.

Greetings from Istanbul!

I’m just back from a family business conference in Istanbul. 70+ multi-generation families from across Turkey convened with the International Family Business Forum to discuss succession and wealth transfer. I gave a talk on preparing the next generation for these happenings and am still processing the the comments that were provoked by my session. I plan to report on it in a few days (when jet lag and brain function have sorted themselves out).

In the meantime, I thought I’d share this piece written by Paul Sullivan for the NYT last Saturday. He quoted me liberally and the piece has elicited strong response from families living through the issues he writes about and that I comment on, as well as from commentators who seem to think that helping ‘rich kids’ is an outrage.

Though I’m deeply concerned about the vast chasm between rich and poor in this country, scapegoating kids who are growing up with means doesn’t seem especially productive. Our job is to provide them with tools to deal with issues that are the unintended consequences of inheriting wealth, not to castigate them for their fate.

As always, I look forward to your comments.

The apple crisp made my synapses spark and the novel jolted my anxiety level.

For Christmas my aunt sent me an old recipe book. It was a vanity cookbook, self-printed by a neighbor who was an old woman when I was growing up. But it contained familiar recipes, including one for an apple crisp that was so simple, so unadorned, a bell rang in my head.

I should explain I’ve been on a quest to replicate my grandmother’s apple crisp for years. I had a distinct flavor memory I hadn’t been able to match. In repeated experiments with countless recipes the texture was too mushy, the flavoring too strong or too bland. Try as I might, I could not bring back the experience of biting into a crispy crisp—a tasty, apply, fruity, spicy sensation. After years of failure, I had pretty much come to the conclusion that my memory was wrong, that I had a fantasy taste that was not to be re-experienced. I had given up.

But something about this recipe caused a little shiver to tickle my unconscious. The recipe is, to say the least, minimalist (see sidebar). And on a recent Sunday, returning from the farmers’ market with my weekly supply of Pink Lady apples, I remembered the recipe and had a sudden impulse to try one more time. Within minutes I had sliced those apples into a pan and added the ingredients as directed by Grammie Boofie (the source of the recipes in the old book). Fifty minutes later, I stuck my fork in the pan and took a bite of the hot, tart, sweet goodness.

WHAM! There it was. Sense memory come to life! I was back in my grandmother’s kitchen. As I lingered on the next few bites I thought about why, after a quest that had taken years, I had finally nailed the experience—the recipe was important. Indeed, I’m now conscientiously tracking down old recipes from my aunts and grandmothers. And Cook’s Illustrated has published a new collection called Lost Recipes, which includes a recipe for Boston Brown Bread dating from the 1930s—in Boston, of course—and there’s a mid-century Ranch Chicken and Dumplings from California that I’m eager to try.

These old recipes are a treasure, old knowledge we need to safeguard and steward.

Call your mother; write to your grandmothers: Let them know you want them to leave their old recipe boxes to you. But as important as these recipes are, they won’t work without authentic ingredients. This was the lesson of my apple crisp.

As I savored apple crisp, I realized that what made the recipe work was the source of the apples. The Pink Ladies came from Fair Hills Farm in Paso Robles. They’re organic. Every now and then I bite into one and find a worm—and rejoice. Worms were standard in apples my grandmother used to bake her pies and apple crisps. The apples have flavor and texture; grown for eating, not so much shipping, these apples have character!

And that was the big difference. I realized that for a very long time, I’d had a prejudice for Granny Smith apples. Regardless of origin or season, I shopped for those tart green apples. Rarely as tart as I wanted, I added lemon—to try to get flavor. And of course, I now realize, the flavor is bland because the apples from Chile and Australia are not local, or organic. Those green beauties I’ve been buying are grown for symmetry and shipping, not flavor. I could have gone through another hundred recipes and it would not have mattered. The apples were all wrong. So to Nancy and David Rydell, the Fair Hills Apples owners: thank you—my quest is over. Now that I have the right recipe, I need the kind of organic, local apples my grandmother routinely used for her baking—apples like those from today’s organic farmers.

That organic is better is not news. Indeed, farmers’ market regulars take access to organic products for granted. But an unorthodox sci-fi novel, very much about food, reminded me recently that we should not be too complacent. The Wind-Up Girl, by Paolo Bacigalupi, is a strange and disturbing fantasy (I hope) of a time in the not-so-distant future when ag companies have become “calorie companies.” “Gene ripping,” as genetic modification is referred to in the book, has resulted in plagues impervious to any defense; and seed banks only exist underground in a few far-flung, hidden corners of the universe, subject to destruction by agents of the calorie companies intent on maintaining control through the production and distribution of calories—which have become the universal energy source. It sounds fantastical—and the book is probably only interesting to those of us who think immersion in the alternative realities served up by science fiction is a good way to spend a plane ride. And I hope the scenario Bacigalupi has conjured up, is. But the book is powerful enough that I’ve started to wonder where the seed bank in my own town is kept, or if we have one. No doubt there are smart farmers who have their own. But how many communities have a policy related to building and maintaining seed banks? In a world where seeds for potatoes are patented, the story of The Wind-Up Girl does not seem quite as far- fetched as it might have a few decades ago.

I’m lucky: I’ve rediscovered antique recipes and have access to ingredients that make them come to life. But I want to make sure that future generations don’t have to rely on luck. For more on seed banks I suggest “Seed Banking” by Adrienne Shelton in Orion Magazine.

This article originally appeared in Edible Ojai Magazine.

Oh for heaven sakes. Where were the grown-ups in the room when those 8-year-old girls were practicing for their ‘dance competition‘? Their clueless parents can say all they want about the YouTube clip being ‘out of context’, but the girls in Orange County shown rocking out to a seductive Beyonce tune are just the latest example of the sexualizing of girls. The trend has been spiraling downward for years and has as much to do with irresponsible parenting as a voracious culture.

‘What’s the harm?’ the parents ask, guilelessly. What’s the GOOD? I want to know.

Kids are having sex at 10 and 11, before there is any kind of full brain development or a thoughtful moral ‘philosophy’ to help guide behavior or make truly independent choices.

Grown-ups are supposed to protect kids from themselves, not encourage bad judgment and silly whims.  Until wise, internally driven good sense is automatic, the supposed wisdom of adults is all kids have. Watching endless replays of the YouTube clip over the last couple of days (on every news show), I am on the one hand comforted by the collective outrage being expressed; and on the other hand disheartened by the way girls are trivialized at every turn. I suppose it is a kind of perverse freedom that images of another female Supreme Court nominee are counterpoint to the 7-year-olds this week. But I can’t help feel that we’ve taken one step forward and two steps back as girls gyrate instead of stride to life’s podiums.

For families who want to empower, rather than sexualize girls this summer, I recommend:

• The 2010 USA Girls Volleyball Championships
• American Dance Training Camp
• And at IMI this summer we are offering two programs that are relevant: Fashion and Finance NYC and Indie Girls in Santa Barbara.
  More information online or by calling 805-945-00475.

I got an email from a reporter the other day I thought I’d share with you all! Because I am preparing for the webinar on “The Launch” coming up later this month (email me for more info), his email triggered a small rant (below). I’d love your comments.

Here’s what got me started:

The reporter, Steve Fox, writes for SPAN, a publication produced by the U.S. Embassy in New Delhi with the objective of explaining America to a high-end audience of Indians–lawyers, doctors, legislators, executives, etc. He’s working on a piece explaining why, as he puts it, “we in the U.S. put such a high value on working voluntarily at an early age—the paper route, the lemonade stand, clerking in a store, helping out on the family farm or in the family business, that kind of thing. I’ve explained,” Fox continued, “that things have changed in the U.S. and that, in the current environment, with high unemployment and the prevalence of illegal workers, many jobs that might have been done by teenagers or college students are being filled by someone else.” But they [SPAN] want an article nonetheless, partially because the value system in India is much different—middle-class kids there would not be encouraged to work. So I wonder if you would be wiling to give me your thoughts. Is it the Protestant work ethic, capitalism, or values of learning self-reliance that make a difference here?

Because of the webinar and the white paper we’re about to publish on “How Great Families Launch Twenty Somethings,” I have spent a lot of time thinking about this question. This is what I wrote back to him:

The values you describe (work ethic, early work for success) are still core and active across dominant US cultures. And there is still an equation linking work with worth here in the US. Across all income groups, the idea that you do nothing and pursue idleness is anathema, embarrassing somehow. Philanthropy in the United States is another genuine form of meaningful work. But you’re right that the game has changed.

The work we’re doing on ‘The Launch’ phase of family development emerged from families asking us for help getting twenty-somethings ‘launched’ into independent, self-sufficient lives. Subsidy of adult children is a rising problem in this country, across all income groups and the drive to ‘help kids get on track’ is a reflection of our sense that work and worth are connected.

As I first started to work on this issue, I admit to having leaned toward the bias that we were dealing with ’slacker kids’ and overly protective parents (my own work ethic writ large, front and center). But I was wrong. Even very well connected families with kids who are quite accomplished are finding that entry into the work world—and even the volunteer work world—is pretty challenging.

Here’s why: whole industries are shifting and collapsing. Publishing, which use to swallow up thousands of entry level kids hardly exists as we once knew it. It’s social media now and at the entry level it doesn’t pay. Finance has consolidated and replaced low level jobs with technology, law firms are parking associates in non-profits until things ‘pick up’, taking up non-profit slots entry level kids might have taken. And as manufacturing collapsed, ‘middle class’ and working class adults are moving into what would otherwise have been entry level jobs.

The work ethic is very much alive. How to exercise it is getting more challenging. Meanwhile the department of labor just issued guidelines on internships, making the unpaid route to your first job harder. They had to, abuses were rampant. But still, getting a foot in the door for kids who can AFFORD to work free and want to work is even harder.

Which takes us to my new mantra and the new cry you will be hearing more of (and that we’re working with families on): “You can’t assume your kids will be able to take a job; they will have to learn how to MAKE a job.” Slacker kids will in fact have an ever harder time getting established, but the worry is that kids with a driving work ethic will be struggling too. Everything we’re doing with young people these days is aimed at building their entrepreneurial skills, supporting their most tenacious drives, trying to buttress that connection between early work and experience and later engagement in purposeful, meaningful lives (this is not JUST about the money, it’s about building great lives).

It may be that out there in the future I cannot yet see there is a more laid back, less work driven vision of existence that the next generation will morph into. And maybe that’s a good thing. For the moment at least, the best I can say is that we are ‘in transition.’

What do you think? Is there a new work ethic? Is our thinking unique?

In the early days, Camp Start-Up was an experiment.

How, I wondered back then, could we give teenagers a taste of entrepreneurial life that would be as appealing as a summer of sailing, as much of an adventure as Outward Bound, and as memorable as trekking in Thailand? A tall order, but I knew that to get anyone to risk even a little slice of the idyll we dream of as summer it would take more than listening to geezers wax euphoric about the joys of a balance sheet in a stuffy classroom in July.

That first summer the camp was for girls only and we held it at a spa in Palm Springs, CA. It was pretty cool (116 degrees on some days, but cool). Palm Springs was not, then, a hotbed of tech start-ups. But the owner of the spa (Sheila Cluff) was a founding member of the Committee of 200 (a club for women entrepreneurs) and getting a chance to be ‘backstage’ at a spa, was, a new kind of experience for these girls. Sheila was an ice skating star and on tour by the time she was 16, and her tales of making money by charging interest on loans to the older (and less frugal) skaters on the tour caught the attention of the campers.

The next year we moved the camp to the Sonoma Valley (looking for a slightly cooler summer climate). And that year, Margo Fraser, the owner of Birkenstocks USA, hosted the girls (and made them brand loyal forever by giving them all cute shoes at a discount so deep they each felt the triumph of a great steal). Once again, we had an entrepreneurial role model whose story was so interesting and accessible, the girls could all imagine themselves as successful entrepreneurs.

In the beginning, our biggest challenge was getting the girls to think big, to have a vision. The most common business start-up idea for girls then was a nail salon. Not a chain of salons, or the world’s biggest salon, just one cozy little salon, their own tiny empire. Thinking big takes practice and in those days (when even the idea of Take Our Daughters to Work Day sparked great controversy), girls were not encouraged to think big. Sometimes it broke my heart how pinched their visions were. How could they change the world if they could not imagine themselves as big players in the world?

But when those ‘aha’ moments arrived and the light went on, when yet another teenager saw herself truly as a mover/shaker, who could make an idea come to life, we could see a whole new path open up for herself. The confidence and self-awareness they went home with was so transformative that parents cried, watching their daughters present their first ‘business plan’ at the camp closing ceremony. So maybe camp wasn’t quite like a hike through Yosemite, but the kids did take home some pretty amazing memories.

These days the camps are co-ed (well, we do have one that’s ‘girls only’ in Florida) and focus has widened a bit. We no longer focus just on business start-ups. Kids who have a dream to be an actor, a teacher, a ‘green activist;’ or a writer need entrepreneurial skills every bit as much as the kid with an idea to replace Google. 21st Century kids need to know how to develop financial safety nets, no matter what their career or avocation, and knowing how to make a job will be more critical than just knowing how to ‘get a job.’

Camp is still fun—golf, swimming, tennis, vegging under big shady trees with friends on a warm summer afternoon are still part of the plan. But what we learned from those early days of Camp Start-Up has made the new camp a place for teenagers to become whoever they want to be. And that is an adventure that’s hard to top.

The headline was chilling to firms and families alike: “Growth of Unpaid Internships May Be Illegal, Officials Say.”

In a market offering fewer opportunities for high school and college-age students to acquire life skills once developed as part of a summer job experience, internships have become a significant source of experience and an important part of the launch process for the next generation. But abused by some employers who overuse kids as free summer labor, many companies will become wary of government oversight and may back away from offering internships altogether.

This will be bad for kids—and for companies. Young people will have fewer opportunities to observe and experience the culture of a variety of workplaces, and companies will have fewer low risk ways to vet potential employees.

But there’ s no cause to panic, for either intentional families or good companies. This is an easy—and an important—challenge to manage. The U.S. Department of Labor published [PDF] six criteria for determining if an internship is legitimate or just a thinly disguised means of getting free labor. And the internships we’ve been involved with at IMI meet all these requirements without a stretch.They are:

1. The training, even though it includes actual operation of the facilities of the employer, is similar to what would be given in a vocational school or academic educational institution. This means that the internship setting must treat the intern as a trainee and provide actual instruction. This is what you want anyway. Young people should be able to observe and try activities that are part of a real learning plan.  The student can work with employers to create such a plan (much like an independent learning project). Companies can design these as well.
2. The training is for the benefit of the trainees—or intern. While companies certainly benefit from having a chance to observe potential future employees, MOST legitimate internships are too time consuming and expensive to be of much help to the intern host. Free labor is a lot less ‘free’ than most people understand but when the terms of the internship are explicit, this aspect of the criteria is easier to meet.
3. The trainees (interns) do not displace regular employees, but work under their close observation. Since most internships we’ve been involved with only last from two to eight weeks, there is little danger interns are displacing real employees. But this is a workplace accountability issue and one that can be clarified at the start of the internship.
4. The employer that provides the training derives no immediate advantage from the activities of the trainees, and on occasion the employer’s operations may actually be impeded. Indeed, most internships are done as an act of generosity on the part of the employer. Hosting an intern takes up valuable time and resources. Because an intern can hardly understand the environment in less than three months, let alone make a meaningful contribution to the workplace, employers are making an investment in the future when they offer an internship, not gaining immediate advantage.
5. Trainees are not necessarily entitled to a job at the conclusion of the training period. Particularly if an intern is still in school, this is not immediately relevant. But IF the intern goes back to school, or on to another internship and later returns to apply for a job independently, there is no foul.
6. The employer and the trainees understand that the trainees are not entitled to wages for the time spent in training. This is the easy one as most internships are established as free experiences. In some cases the family pays a third party or the employer for young people to gain exposure to industries, professions, and environments they have some interest in or curiosity about.

Internships are vital as vehicles for helping the next generation integrate into the social network of an entrepreneurial culture. Giving kids access to role models, specialized language, and industry knowledge is key to helping them launch into adulthood. Now is not the time to panic. It’s time for next gen members and their families to plan and propose an internship for the summer experience of choice.

Source: U.S. Department of Labor “ADVISORY: TRAINING AND EMPLOYMENT GUIDANCE LETTER NO. 12-09”