[zheng]

This is pretty tech-specific. In many other fields, unpaid internships are seen as a good deal, mostly because their are so few of them and so many applicants. A friend of mine who recently converted an (unpaid) internship to a job in DC worked really hard just to land the internship. At the same time, he was learning the job but in no way provided the same benefit to his employer as a tech intern does.

[zonum]

Sort of adding on to that, an unpaid opportunity doesn't have to be an unpaid internship. An unpaid opportunity could be a CS student in college working on the website for an on-campus club, for example, or a public relations student serving on the executive board as the PR chair of an on-campus organization.