Hillary Clinton, champion of college affordability, won't pay student interns a salary

Hillary Clinton
(Image credit: Patrick Smith/Getty Images)

Hillary Clinton has recently made increased college affordability a centerpiece of her campaign, arguing that students should be able to avoid loans while agreeing to work 10 hours a week so college can be "available to everyone willing to work for it." But that belief doesn't seem to extend to her own internship program.

On Sunday, the Clinton campaign tweeted out this invitation to current college students and recent graduates:

As a former presidential campaign intern who did not get great views, I have to say this sounds like a sweet deal — until you click through and notice the fine print at the bottom of the application, which notes this gig is "an unpaid internship program."

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It's hardly unusual for campaign internships to be unpaid (mine was), but this is not the first time Clinton has caught flak for apparent inconsistency on this issue: She previously came under fire for only paying some of her interns at the Clinton Foundation despite critiquing unpaid internships at a speech in 2013.

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Bonnie Kristian

Bonnie Kristian was a deputy editor and acting editor-in-chief of TheWeek.com. She is a columnist at Christianity Today and author of Untrustworthy: The Knowledge Crisis Breaking Our Brains, Polluting Our Politics, and Corrupting Christian Community (forthcoming 2022) and A Flexible Faith: Rethinking What It Means to Follow Jesus Today (2018). Her writing has also appeared at Time Magazine, CNN, USA Today, Newsweek, the Los Angeles Times, and The American Conservative, among other outlets.