10 ms·

I have two girls, 24 and 18 years old. Both live at home right now. The 24 year old graduated from a selective private liberal arts college in 2015 and is work

by epalmer 10y ago

I have two girls, 24 and 18 years old. Both live at home right now. The 24 year old graduated from a selective private liberal arts college in 2015 and is working part time in a library. She does not qualify for health insurance or many other benefits. She does not make enough to live on her own. She is also in graduate school online for a Master of Library Science (MLS). She wants to be a librarian and you pretty much need an MLS to become a librarian. Her part time income mostly goes just to pay for graduate school. Her sister graduated high school 2016 and is taking a gap year as an AmeriCorp Vista employee working with center city schools on after school STEM programs from FIRST Robotics. She will go to college fall 2017 at Olin College of Engineering. We suspect that the oldest will live with us for many years and her mom and I are fine with that. Expensive liberal arts degrees don't often pay well. I think that situation is going to catch up with liberal arts colleges very soon. I like having her around. She does some chores and provides some company to us. But mostly she stays to herself studying or reading. If you had told me 10 years ago that she would be living with us after college and that we would be okay with that, I would have thought you crazy. Her younger sister will get an engineering degree and we will only see here once and awhile after that. We are okay with that also, though we will miss her so much. We mostly have younger friends so they are not yet at a place where their older children can be living at home.

FussyZeus 10y ago
I don't understand this situation with your daughter: - Wanted to be a librarian - Studied to be a librarian - Graduated school to be a librarian - Got a job as a librarian - Doesn't make enough to live on her own and pay the cost of her education to be a librarian And this isn't isolated to librarians, it's just a very instructive example. How is it we now have entire classes of jobs where the education they require for that job now puts you in such a degree of debt that you have to live off of your parents? We need librarians, no? We want to make sure we still have those? We have to be willing to pay for them.
- knz 10y ago
  I don't understand why a librarian needs a master's degree? Is it just due to competition for a limited number of positions? Or are there skills gained from post graduate study that are essential to being a librarian?
  - FussyZeus 10y ago
    I don't understand that either but for the purposes of the question it isn't really needed. The library has decided these are the requirements yet is paying a salary to a worker that doesn't sustain those requirements, and I'm wondering why this is allowed.
    - epalmer 10y ago
      FuzzyZeus you are correct. However the free market is dictating that an MLS is required. this may change in time. Many librarian jobs are going away with the advent of great search engines and robotic book stack pickers. She got 4 years of experience in the college library doing digital library work (scanning, tagging, metadata, etc.). We are hopeful this will sustain her once she is a librarian for ten or more years. Part of this is we notice in our little world that non-digital librarians don't want to learn digital library skills. Their loss her gain. Wow this world is complicated.
      - knz 10y ago
        Sorry I did not intend for my comments to be disparaging - if the market demands that level of education then it's necessary to enter that field. I understand that and can relate (my wife is a teacher who was required to obtain a master's degree in her specialty). I just find it interesting that post graduate education is now required in many fields. I suspect it's partly due to demand for a limited number of positions but also due to shifts in expectations about on the job training and entry level positions. I also suspect that the evolution of hiring and professional HR staff has some role in it.
        epalmer 10y ago
- epalmer 10y ago
  It is a little more complicated and it is not as bad as it sounds for her. Undergraduate degree in sociology and a minor in anthropology. BA in sociology is not very employable but is the most common undergraduate degree for librarians. Once the affordable care act (ObamaCare) was made into law the library (local public library) started making most non-librarian jobs part time so they don't have to provide health insurance. So today she works circulation but is not a librarian. She has no college debt because she got a free education. I work at the college and they pay full tuition for some staff and faculty children. Her education would not have been worth the greater than $200,000 retail cost of her degree. We are very lucky to have her college paid for. She will end up paying for maybe 80% of her graduate degree herself and take student loans out for the last semester. She puts money aside in her roth IRA. We are lucky she is cheap and sees the value in saving for retirement. I guess her mom and I did something right. Her mom and I both work for colleges. Her mom works for a public four year school and I work for a private liberal arts college. We see in both that many graduates are not earning what they claim the graduates can earn. As I said in my original post that this will catch up in Liberal Arts (and really non-technical) degreed students. Her younger sister will be going to an engineering school where the graduates are earning, on average, 25% more right out of school than other engineering schools. We are hopeful she can avoid automation job collapse and maybe participate in the automation side of this phenomenon. "If you can't beat them then join them."
  - FussyZeus 10y ago
    Oh alright, I misunderstood on a few points. Thanks for clarifying and tell her good luck from a rando person on the Internet.
    - epalmer 10y ago
      Thanks. She is sitting beside me right now and I will tell her.
  - jdavis703 10y ago
    Why do people even spend $200,000 on a degree if they're not rich? I went to community college for my associates degree in IT (about $5000 total), and then went to university for a bachelor's of science in IT (roughly $15,000 all in). Since you work at a university, what does that extra $180,000 buy? What's the sales pitch you'll give to students to get them to pay so much?
- mechagodzilla 10y ago
  My spouse is a librarian. There are cheap and expensive ways to acquire an MLS degree, depending on your financial means, and the pay varies substantially based on your location and the type of work you do. In the case here, their daughter is a grad student living at home and working part time to finance their education, which is perfectly reasonable for many people. Most public librarians earn around the average household income, so it's as viable a career as many other options, and it doesn't involve crazy hours or physically taxing work that can get difficult as one ages.
- scarface74 10y ago
  It's not an "entire class of jobs" that caused the situation. The parent and/or student purposefully made the decision to get mired in dtudent loan debt to go to a "selective private college", knowing that the pay wouldn't be good.
raverbashing 10y ago
I'm sorry, I can't defend being willingly going into a limited career path. And this is not simply "humanities pay less". There are a lot of "different" professions that can evolve and become good (high-paying) positions. Even librarian studies can go to become an archivist, managing some private collection, etc. But requiring an overpriced Master degree for a librarian position IS A SCAM. And getting yourself into a romanticized position inside a clique is not a good career movement. People moving to LA and waiting tables until they get a movie part looks like a more viable career path than that
- FussyZeus 10y ago
  Why not just make the education less insanely expensive? STEM fields pay more but we need other jobs filled that are not STEM which is something we forget very regularly. We cannot just expect to have a permanent underclass of essential workers that we then turn around and deride for making shitty choices at every opportunity and basically hold in perpetual servitude.
  - raverbashing 10y ago
    Being cheap helps however this doesn't matter if you still can't earn a living with the chosen profession

by epalmer 10y ago

FussyZeus 10y ago

I don't understand this situation with your daughter: - Wanted to be a librarian - Studied to be a librarian - Graduated school to be a librarian - Got a job as a librarian - Doesn't make enough to live on her own and pay the cost of her education to be a librarian And this isn't isolated to librarians, it's just a very instructive example. How is it we now have entire classes of jobs where the education they require for that job now puts you in such a degree of debt that you have to live off of your parents? We need librarians, no? We want to make sure we still have those? We have to be willing to pay for them.

knz 10y ago
I don't understand why a librarian needs a master's degree? Is it just due to competition for a limited number of positions? Or are there skills gained from post graduate study that are essential to being a librarian?
- FussyZeus 10y ago
  I don't understand that either but for the purposes of the question it isn't really needed. The library has decided these are the requirements yet is paying a salary to a worker that doesn't sustain those requirements, and I'm wondering why this is allowed.
  - epalmer 10y ago
    FuzzyZeus you are correct. However the free market is dictating that an MLS is required. this may change in time. Many librarian jobs are going away with the advent of great search engines and robotic book stack pickers. She got 4 years of experience in the college library doing digital library work (scanning, tagging, metadata, etc.). We are hopeful this will sustain her once she is a librarian for ten or more years. Part of this is we notice in our little world that non-digital librarians don't want to learn digital library skills. Their loss her gain. Wow this world is complicated.
    - knz 10y ago
      Sorry I did not intend for my comments to be disparaging - if the market demands that level of education then it's necessary to enter that field. I understand that and can relate (my wife is a teacher who was required to obtain a master's degree in her specialty). I just find it interesting that post graduate education is now required in many fields. I suspect it's partly due to demand for a limited number of positions but also due to shifts in expectations about on the job training and entry level positions. I also suspect that the evolution of hiring and professional HR staff has some role in it.
      - epalmer 10y ago
epalmer 10y ago
It is a little more complicated and it is not as bad as it sounds for her. Undergraduate degree in sociology and a minor in anthropology. BA in sociology is not very employable but is the most common undergraduate degree for librarians. Once the affordable care act (ObamaCare) was made into law the library (local public library) started making most non-librarian jobs part time so they don't have to provide health insurance. So today she works circulation but is not a librarian. She has no college debt because she got a free education. I work at the college and they pay full tuition for some staff and faculty children. Her education would not have been worth the greater than $200,000 retail cost of her degree. We are very lucky to have her college paid for. She will end up paying for maybe 80% of her graduate degree herself and take student loans out for the last semester. She puts money aside in her roth IRA. We are lucky she is cheap and sees the value in saving for retirement. I guess her mom and I did something right. Her mom and I both work for colleges. Her mom works for a public four year school and I work for a private liberal arts college. We see in both that many graduates are not earning what they claim the graduates can earn. As I said in my original post that this will catch up in Liberal Arts (and really non-technical) degreed students. Her younger sister will be going to an engineering school where the graduates are earning, on average, 25% more right out of school than other engineering schools. We are hopeful she can avoid automation job collapse and maybe participate in the automation side of this phenomenon. "If you can't beat them then join them."
- FussyZeus 10y ago
  Oh alright, I misunderstood on a few points. Thanks for clarifying and tell her good luck from a rando person on the Internet.
  - epalmer 10y ago
    Thanks. She is sitting beside me right now and I will tell her.
- jdavis703 10y ago
  Why do people even spend $200,000 on a degree if they're not rich? I went to community college for my associates degree in IT (about $5000 total), and then went to university for a bachelor's of science in IT (roughly $15,000 all in). Since you work at a university, what does that extra $180,000 buy? What's the sales pitch you'll give to students to get them to pay so much?
mechagodzilla 10y ago
My spouse is a librarian. There are cheap and expensive ways to acquire an MLS degree, depending on your financial means, and the pay varies substantially based on your location and the type of work you do. In the case here, their daughter is a grad student living at home and working part time to finance their education, which is perfectly reasonable for many people. Most public librarians earn around the average household income, so it's as viable a career as many other options, and it doesn't involve crazy hours or physically taxing work that can get difficult as one ages.
scarface74 10y ago
It's not an "entire class of jobs" that caused the situation. The parent and/or student purposefully made the decision to get mired in dtudent loan debt to go to a "selective private college", knowing that the pay wouldn't be good.

raverbashing 10y ago

I'm sorry, I can't defend being willingly going into a limited career path. And this is not simply "humanities pay less". There are a lot of "different" professions that can evolve and become good (high-paying) positions. Even librarian studies can go to become an archivist, managing some private collection, etc. But requiring an overpriced Master degree for a librarian position IS A SCAM. And getting yourself into a romanticized position inside a clique is not a good career movement. People moving to LA and waiting tables until they get a movie part looks like a more viable career path than that

FussyZeus 10y ago
Why not just make the education less insanely expensive? STEM fields pay more but we need other jobs filled that are not STEM which is something we forget very regularly. We cannot just expect to have a permanent underclass of essential workers that we then turn around and deride for making shitty choices at every opportunity and basically hold in perpetual servitude.
- raverbashing 10y ago
  Being cheap helps however this doesn't matter if you still can't earn a living with the chosen profession