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Please stop asking me to recruit students and share postings for unpaid research internships.
One student researching in my lab is homeless. Literally - no bed of their own. The last thing I'm going to do is ask them to work for free.
This should be no surprise - 10% of all students in my university system are homeless. Really. latimes.com/local/lanow/la…
When you provide unpaid research opportunities to students who can afford it, you're amplifying the most pervasive inequities in science.
When my students apply for opportunities, they're competing against -- and losing out to -- people who can afford to work for free.
How can you help promote equity and inclusion in science? Don't train rich students who can put lines on their CV by working for free.
A lot of my dissertation was funded by volunteers who paid their own way, I was part of the problem. I didn't understand these issues then.
So, I'm clearly not better than y'all. I'm just pointing out how this perpetuates the problem, so our decisions can be well informed.
I've decided that if I take on a student who can pay their own way, I can provide the training if they also can fully fund another student.
This has been a hypothetical for me. But if you work at a uni where the student lot has the nicest cars, maybe this could work for you.
