“Students don’t have problems finding internships, students have problems getting internships,” Eric Normington, the company’s chief marketing officer, said by telephone from Hong Kong where he was overseeing the local program. “We can secure those exclusive positions.”

Employers say the middlemen save them time and hassle. “They make the search process a lot easier,” said Sarah Cirkiel, the chief executive of Pitch Control Public Relations, a small New York firm that started four years ago and has taken in 20 summer interns all from the University of Dreams. “I feel like they hand-select their interns for the specific agencies to make sure it’s the right fit. They just show up at our doorstep, ready to go.”

But many educators and students argue that while the programs bridge one gulf  between those who have degrees from prestigious colleges or family connections and those who do not  only to create a new one, between the students who have parents willing and able to buy their children better job prospects and those who do not.

“You’re going to increase that divide early, on families that understand that investment process and will pay and the families that don’t,” said Anthony Antonio, a professor of education at Stanford University. “This is just ratcheting it up another notch, which is quite frightening.”

Julia McDonald, the career services director at Florida State University, questioned the need for these programs. “The economy has had an impact, but there are more than enough internship opportunities out there still,” she said. “That’s like buying a luxury car.”

Other college advisers cautioned that while the desire to help is understandable, parents who pay for an internship program are depriving their children of the chance to develop job-seeking skills or to taste rejection before they have to fend for themselves.

The industry dismisses the criticism.

“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.”