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[quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous]Can only speak to my experience at a large, public institution and wet lab work, but typically undergraduates had to start as volunteers to get a foot in the door unless they were truly exceptional. From there, if they were good and once they had put in some time, there were a range of opportunities for funding over the summer either through the PI's grant, external scholarships/internships/grants, or internal department or institutional funding. The student had to do the planning, applications, and lead the charge on the funding most of the time. Housing and tuition stipends were never included in the ones I saw, but it's possible it exists elsewhere. Typical rates of pay were minimum wage up to maybe $25/hr. [/quote]

This. The initial period of research is really all training and little productivity so we can’t pay a student except if we have special government money for supporting undergraduate training. Later we may have more flexibility and I also try to find money for students for summer who would need a summer job if a can. But research isn’t finance - we don’t have paid internships the same way as a means to convince you to come work for us later. I spend 40 plus hours of solid work on top of my teaching and research to raise the tuition of each PhD student I have. There isn’t much extra for paying undergrads.   I am happy to give credit and I am highly supportive of good students and find them great mentors. I have been thrilled to work with many fantastic undergrads despite this and about half our papers have undergrad co authors, occasionally even major authors.

- stem prof at a top private university [/quote]

Agree with these posters.  I was actually paid my first (relatively useless) year in a lab but it didn’t come out of the lab funds — my university had a specific bucket of money for paying undergrad in those positions; you just had to apply and if you were on financial aid you were almost sure to get funding for one summer.  After that you are expected to have learned enough to get paid or do your research work during the semester for credit.[/quote]

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