Yet again a certain group of people are being screwed over... guess who? That's right! The people who paid tuition fees to go to university and are now trying to get their first academic post. UCL just advertised for 3 unpaid full-time "internships" that required specialist scientific knowledge and, in essence, amounts to offloading the work that's tedious onto young researchers.
The advert has since been taken down (go online pressure!), but Ben Goldacre has mirrored the PDF. Here's the screenshots of the ad, also:
Meanwhile, over at THE, the astonishing commenter "Professor Biggins Sorn" writes:
Over the last twenty years a strong entitlement culture has developed in the UK, and has now infiltrated HE with many postdocs now feeling that they are entitled to an academic position regardless of their ability.
Uh huh, that's right. That same "entitlement culture", presumably, that Prof BS (good abbreviation!) feels when realising that some of us didn't get our university education provided for nothing, by the state, along with living grants (I'll assume, since Prof BS is able to evaluate the last 20 years, that he/she went to university in a time pre-tuition fees). Next time somebody who went to university for nothing moans about "entitlement" of youth, perhaps they'd like to make a £27,000 contribution back to the state (+ their living grant) and then start over?