Faced with a dismal market for college summer internships, a growing number of anxious parents are pitching in to help -- by buying their kids a foot in the door.

Some are paying for-profit companies to place their college students in internships that are mostly unpaid. Others are hiring marketing consultants to create direct-mail campaigns promoting their children's workplace potential. Still other parents are buying internships outright in online charity auctions.

Alison Seiffer

Even as the economy slows, internship-placement programs are seeing demand rise by 15% to 25% over a year ago. Critics of the programs say they deepen the divide between the haves and have-nots by giving students from more affluent families an advantage. But parents say the fees are a small price for giving their children a toehold in a treacherous job market. And operators of the programs claim they actually broaden access to internships by opening them to students who lack personal or political connections to big employers.

The whole idea of paying cash so your kid can work is sometimes jarring at first to parents accustomed to finding jobs the old-fashioned way -- by pounding the pavement. Susan and Raymond Sommer of tiny St. Libory, Ill., were dismayed when their daughter Megan, then a junior at a Kentucky university, asked them to spend $8,000 so she could get an unpaid sports-marketing internship last summer in New York City. Paying to work "was something people don't do around here," says Ms. Sommer, a retired concrete-company office worker; her husband, a retired electrical superintendent, objected that if "you work for a company, you should be getting paid."

But Megan, then 20, had already applied for 25 summer internships and hadn't received any replies. The Sommers gave in, and Ms. Sommer says they're glad they did. After working last summer for a sports-memorabilia auction concern, Megan has come "out of her shell. It really made her grow as an individual," Ms. Sommer says. Megan agrees, saying the internship helped her focus her post-graduation career plans.

The program they used, University of Dreams, Los Gatos, Calif., is one of a handful of for-profit internship companies that have sprung up in the past few years. After screening out some applicants -- the company won't say how many -- University of Dreams helps students polish their résumés, arranges interviews with employers that offer internships, such as fashion house Donna Karan International or public-relations shop Ruder Finn, and also provides on-campus housing and after-hours social and educational programming for the students during their eight-week internships. The company guarantees an internship placement or refunds students' fees, which range from $5,000 to $9,500.

Other parents are paying consultants to mount the equivalent of a direct-mail campaign on behalf of their children. Sheila Miller, Albuquerque, says her daughter, Amber, couldn't find the internship she needed to complete her degree in emergency-management planning at a Texas university; 18 months after completing her course work, Ms. Miller says, Amber was stalled working a $10-an-hour retail job that wasn't paying the rent.

To jump-start their daughter's career, Ms. Miller and her husband dipped into the remainder of Amber's college fund late last year to send her to Fast Track Internships, a Highland Village, Texas, consultant founded in 2005. For $799, the firm helped her polish Amber's résumé and cover letter, identify 133 target employers and mail them all letters and résumés. Amber soon received 15 calls from employers and last week took an unpaid internship with a city police department, writing their emergency-response plan. "She's just thrilled," Ms. Miller says.

Other parents are purchasing internships outright in charity auctions. CharityFolks.com, a fundraising Web site, saw a sharp rise in internships offered for sale last year at such employers as Rolling Stone, Elle magazine and Atlantic Records, says Chief Executive Kelly Fiore. Another site, CharityBuzz.com, says a one-week internship at a music-production company sold last month for $12,000.

Ms. Fiore sees internships as one way to help charities fight "an otherwise staggering downturn" in donations. Mindful of the trend, hard-pressed nonprofits are pounding the pavement to drum up internships to sell. Gina Philips, Los Angeles, a consultant to the Alzheimer's Association, says demand from wealthy parents has led employers in the entertainment industry to create internships that otherwise wouldn't exist, just to help raise money.

Some critics say the programs distort students' job-seeking experience by easing the rigor of the job search. "The type of students corporate America wants are the students who can find their own internships," says Claudia Tattanelli, CEO of Universum North America, Philadelphia, which consults with employers on recruiting. The vast majority get internships through campus career-services offices or Web sites such as MonsterTrak.com.

Others question the value of the unpaid internships the programs often provide. Another novel internship program, Brill Street & Co., Chicago, founded in 2006, places students only in paid positions and derives its profit by taking a percentage of their paychecks. Nancy Lerner, co-founder, says this is the only way to ensure applicants will get "quality work assignments." Brill's applicants have doubled in the past year to about 150 a week.

While career counselors warn that unpaid interns often do little more than pour coffee or run errands, several employers and interns I interviewed said the work was worthwhile. Ruder Finn, New York, has found 29 of its 36 unpaid interns since 2003 through University of Dreams and has hired at least two of them into permanent jobs, says Cathleen Graham, a Ruder human-resources executive.

The internship programs also contend they actually broaden access for students -- allowing firms to recruit from lesser-known schools and distant cities. "It's a huge misconception to say this is a program for rich kids," says Eric Lochtefeld, CEO of University of Dreams, which operates programs in six U.S. and five overseas cities. "The average student comes from the middle class, and their parents dig deep" to pay for it. His company has begun funding scholarships and grants for low-income applicants.

Mike Esterday of Nashville, Tenn., whose daughter got photography and marketing internships in London and Hong Kong through University of Dreams, says, "it would be really tough to get anything of this caliber, unless you know somebody."

While some fault parents for "buying your kids an 'in,' " says CharityFolks' Ms. Fiore, "I happen to feel that a foot in the door is fair, because it's talent that's going to seal your fate. It's your drive and what you do once you're given the opportunity" that determines how far kids finally get.

Criticism aside, parents see the education and experience their children gain as priceless. Teresa Hayes, Evanston, Ill., plans to pay $3,400 to the Washington Internship Program, which guarantees placement and helps secure housing for students, to secure a Capitol Hill internship this summer for her daughter Leah Barnes, 19, a Stanford University sophomore. Ms. Hayes regards this as just another of many opportunities she has provided her child, from foreign-exchange programs to teen-leadership conferences.

"People say, 'you're nuts, are you kidding me? You're spending thousands of dollars on your kids,' " says Ms. Hayes, a pharmaceutical sales representative, who is also paying college tuition for Leah's younger sister. But Leah "worked so hard. Whatever she wants to do, I want her to have the background to do it intelligently." Leah, who hopes for a career in international law, says she is grateful and excited.

Without such programs, says Linda Bayer, executive director of the Washington Internship Program, the capital would be "the playground of the children of the rich, whether they were capable or not" -- because snaring internships would largely be based on personal connections. But with programs such as hers, "there's no distinction here between the uber-rich and someone whose parents are schoolteachers." Her placements are running about 25% ahead of a year ago.

Write to Sue Shellenbarger at sue.shellenbarger@wsj.com