I saw a couple of ads today that dealt with students who were enrolled with various schools of some sort and were looking for people who need specific services as they themselves need working experience. This ranged from everything such as a full package dental cleaning for about $25 or haircuts for free.
Of course, the obvious concern would be that they are students and so the quality that you will be receiving is questionable compared to a professional service. Generally speaking, I would say that risk is more true if you are talking about a fresh graduate looking for their first opportunity.
But what I noticed is that usually with these types of advertisements the students are heavily monitored by an experienced individual and so in that sense it’s not like it is a situation where someone is going in blindly and using you simply as a learning tool from square one. I know for most people I guess the assumption is if it was like a haircut the student is just going to take a shaver and potentially make you bald.
In my opinion this can be a good alternative for things that aren’t critical. Usually too, just like getting a professional service you can usually pre-screen them ahead of time where if the offer is through a school/program it can be almost the same as getting the service from anyone else. I mean hey, there are “professionals†that you have to be equally picky about too in terms of both cost and performance.