I’ve brought on interns/RAs in roles as a professor at a university, as a scientific researcher at a national lab, and as a manager at a large company. They usually pay the equivalent of $60-80k, except for the RAs who get a stipend/room and board, and a tuition waiver (which works out about the same depending on the school). Every position was filled by a person making a direct application, either to me personally or via a position advertised on the company website. One or two might have been from an institutional outreach program, but I’ve never heard of an intern coming in from a third party recruiter.

I’m absolutely not disagreeing with you. Your experience may be very different (my current company doesn’t deal with third party recruiters at all, and my org doesn’t even use contractors). I just wanted to throw my experience out there so that people would realize there’s a variety of opportunities that might require different approaches.