“Universities forget that they themselves are, in essence, businesses,” said C. Mason Gates, the president of Internships.com, an online placement service. “Just because they’re doing it in a nonprofit fashion doesn’t mean that those of us doing it for profit are doing it incorrectly.”
This is a quote from the New York Times story about businesses that help college students get valued internships. These businesses, for a fairly hefty fee, help students secure internships noting that, particularly with the limitation in the number of jobs, internships have become very competitive and like most opportunities in this market driven society of ours, it always helps to have connections and this is what the firms provide. Of course, this process does create a divide between those who can afford to "buy" connections and those who can't. Another hallmark of our society.
Back to the quote where I began today's blog. The purpose of the nonprofit sector is to fill the void between the for-profits (who have economic incentives to offer what they offer) and the public sector (who have public demand). But, as we have seen of late, there are for-profits who are proving that they can both fill a void and have an incentive to do what they do. This new sector, this double and even tripple bottom line sector, is evolving quickly and may indeed change the nature of what it means to be nonprofit. After-all, I have many times suggested that many colleges act much more like they are for-profits than nonprofits.