J-PAL Senior Research Associate reviews

-back end operations can be more efficient

My PIs and many of my RA friends' PIs were abusive. For many of the JPAL RAs though this is their first job, and they don't really know how to speak up for themselves. The organizational structure was such that it was rare if ever that it intervened to protect RAs from abusive American PIs. The general structure of the organization is extremely exploitative and PIs get much more from the experience than RAs. Despite the fact that the RAs are literally indispensable for the research they are literally relegated to a footnote in the paper. In truth RAs bring more value to the research than the PIs. The worst part is that that RAs take this exploitation with the hope that their PIs will give them rla recommendation letter for grad school in the US. Sadly these letters are not as forthcoming as RAs initially expect. To think that students in the US can get the same letters simply for doing well in the professors class, a class that meets two times a week for an hour and a half is a level of unfairness that is truly disgusting. I am the only person I am aware of from my time at JPAL that ever ended up in a top notch PhD program in the USA, out of almost 10 to 15 close friends who were RAs at the time. A few went to the USA for MBAs but this was the exception not the norm. I am currently un my 4th year at MIT.