28 March 2017

Pay your interns

Matt Shipman pointed to a crowdfunding campaign for a student who wants to do an internship at NASA.

That’s horrible.

Internships should be work that give entry level experience. But the key word is “work.” If you don’t pay interns, you’re just exploiting them. And that’s wrong.

Spotting this on top of a university getting ready to destroy millions of museum specimens, and a new professor being criticized publicly for caring too much about teaching and outreach, make me feel like this about science culture, particularly academic science:


2 comments:

Mike Taylor said...

> ... a university getting ready to destroy millions of museum specimens, and a professor being criticized publicly for caring too much about teaching and outreach ...

Links?

Meanwhile, everything is awful over here, too.

practiCal fMRI said...

Can't find the link now but a few months ago another neuroscience-y blog wrote about this topic, pointing out how unpaid internships is another way to maintain bias against poor students. It's obvious why after a nanosecond's thought, but it is also powerful ammo to use against PIs who resist. Or, as a recent ex-VPOTUS put it: "Don't tell me your values, tell me your budget. I'll tell you your values."