This might be the difference between an internship and a co-op, but when I was a co-op at JPL, they paid a salary comparable to what other companies paid new gr

This might be the difference between an internship and a co-op, but when I was a co-op at JPL, they paid a salary comparable to what other companies paid new grad hires. And the total number of months you co-oped was used in their salary formula if you got an offer for a permanent position. The fact that you are getting such a tiny fraction of that - 20 years later in this job market - is astounding to me. Sounds like you could do better on Elance or Odesk, and that's saying a lot.