Internship Buy-In
Do you ever scroll through LinkedIn and wonder how college freshmen land internships in companies that don’t even hire interns? Nepotism, you might think. And you’re not necessarily wrong; nepotism does play a huge part in landing people opportunities. But, what about the situations where your relative’s connections do not matter but the size of their wallets do? What is the term for when you can have a glorious internship and a valuable recommendation letter all from a bank account that reads something like “$500,000”?
In recent years, as a part of incentives to attract savings to their bank, several commercial banks in China, including CITIC, China Everbright, Pingan Bank, began offering programs that target the offspring of high-net-worth clients. Some of these incentives include classes on finance and wealth management, Harvard University Public Speaking Summer camps, observation and study at the world's top companies, and most ludicrous of all, high-value internship experiences followed by recommendation letters. In one of CITIC Suzhou’s advertisements posted on their social media platform in 2022, the company states that they are looking for “offspring of CITIC bank VIPs or of regular clients with assets totaling over three million RMB (and considering the difficulty of the programs, students who wish to join need to be undergraduates or outstanding high schoolers)” (CITIC Suzhou 2022). In a phone call to the customer service line of PingAn Bank, I made an inquiry about their client-exclusive internships and was told by the operator that they would connect me to a client manager, who would explain in detail how much savings are needed at their bank for various types of these opportunities, ranging from simple learning experiences to internships and recommendations. The set amount of assets an individual has at a certain bank acts as a threshold to a pool, where their offspring will have valuable opportunities that elevate their profile and backgrounds, possibly giving them an advantage in future job markets. This represents the same mechanisms as a poker game buy-in. You pay $250 grand; you get to enter Molly Bloom’s game and toy with your luck (or skills) (Bloom 2017). Except that in this instance, what your money brings your kids into is not an exclusive poker game, but rather a shortcut in polishing off their LinkedIn profile and eventually bringing them advantage in the job market.
While capitalistically there is nothing wrong with either scenario, should the world be a place where people place poker games and the economic means of sustenance in the same category and say that from a business perspective, all is fair?
So what happens when capitalistic fairness becomes the basis of everything? In a recent study of elite university admission data, it is suggested that top schools tend to give private school children higher non academic ratings (Chetty, Deming, Friedman 2023; Bhatia, miller, Katz, 2023). Among applicants with the same SAT or ACT scores, children who come from families whose wealth is in the top 1% in the US were 34%more likely to be accepted (Bhatia, miller, Katz, 2023).
Economics Raj Chetty, who co-conducted and authored the study, questioned “Are these highly-selective private colleges in America taking kids from very high-income, influential families and basically channeling them to remain at the top in the next generation? Filling that question in its head, could we potentially diversify who’s in a position of leadership in our society by changing who is admitted?” Though there isn’t a similar study conducted in the job market, that same question applies. Similar to the wealth and elite universities concept, programs like what these banks are offering place a threshold on opportunities that relates largely to wealth. They help the children of the wealthy and established to exceed their less-wealthy peers by allowing them to enter the competition for these background-boosting programs and internships.
While employment in certain industries isn’t entirely decided upon past experiences and prior internships/jobs, however, they certainly play a role in the process. Internship program thresholds allow wealthy children to present more developed, impressive, and distinguished resumes to employers than other candidates. Furthermore, these skills tend to lead to higher-paying jobs, attributing to another cycle in the wealth-gap. In 2015, the top 10% of the Chinese population held 41% of income and 67% of wealth. From 2015 to 2021, China’s Gini index had increased from 46.2 to 46.6 (National Bureau of Statistics of China, 2023). If these commercial incentives were to be continued, it seems only a matter of time before they start meddling with the income gap, bringing about detrimental effects to equality.
References
Bhatia, Aatish, et al. 2023 . “Study of Elite College Admissions Data Suggests Being Very Rich Is Its Own Qualification.” The New York Times, 24 July 2023.https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2023/07/24/upshot/ivy-league-elite-college-admissions.html
Bloom, Molly. 2017. “‘Molly’s Game’ Inspiration Molly Bloom Chats with Ellen.” Interview by Ellen Degeneres. The Ellen Degeneres Show, Warner Bros. Television, 30 Nov. 2017, https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tzuXce0OLfo. Accessed 18 Nov. 2023.
Chetty, Raj, David J.Deming, and John N.Friedman , 2023 “Diversifying Society’s Leaders? The Determinants and Causal Effects Of ...” Opportunity Insights.www.opportunityinsights.org/wp-content/uploads/2023/07/CollegeAdmissions_Nontech_Figures.pdf.
CITIC Suzhou. 2022. “少年有志 燃梦夏日|出国金融中心子女教育背景提升系列活动集结” (CITIC Suzhou Wechat Platform, 17 June. 2022)
Hasell, Joe,Pablo Arriagade, Esteban Ortiz-Ospina, and Max Roster “Economic Inequality.” “Economic Inequality” Our World in Data. www.ourworldindata.org/economic-inequality#:~:text=This%20evidence%20shows%20us%20that,inequality%20is%20not%20rising%20everywhere.
National Bureau of Statistics of China. 2023.“China: Gini Coefficient 2022.” Statista. www.statista.com/statistics/250400/inequality-of-income-distribution-in-china-based-on-the-gini-index/#:~:text=In%202021%2C%20China%20reached%20a,the%20greater%20is%20the%20inequality.