5 ms·

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 jo

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
        I did not read your comments as disparaging. All is good.
    - cableshaft 10y ago
      The more she gets involved in library community event planning and digital work, the better, I think. I have a librarian friend who has been running a 20s and 30s social events group (they do book discussions, game nights, movie nights, adult coloring nights, mug painting, etc) through her library and has been slowly taking up more and more of the libraries resources and become more prominent in the library as the program has been expanded.
- packrat 10y ago
  I had one library manager admit to me that it was a bit of a guild system: really, the only place you use the proprietary bits of a library science degree is in a library. If they hired anybody who showed proficiency in Dewey Decimal System, processing books and conservation, who would ever get a Master's Degree in it ever again? and of course, these are not a significant portion of the equation anymore.
  - epalmer 10y ago
    Packrat I think this is very accurate. My daughter read your comment and agrees.
- erikpukinskis 10y ago
  You can search "library science masters curriculum" and see what courses they are taking. Librarians do a bunch of random stuff, from helping people with research projects to book preservation to running literacy programs.
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.

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
      I did not read your comments as disparaging. All is good.
  - cableshaft 10y ago
    The more she gets involved in library community event planning and digital work, the better, I think. I have a librarian friend who has been running a 20s and 30s social events group (they do book discussions, game nights, movie nights, adult coloring nights, mug painting, etc) through her library and has been slowly taking up more and more of the libraries resources and become more prominent in the library as the program has been expanded.
packrat 10y ago
I had one library manager admit to me that it was a bit of a guild system: really, the only place you use the proprietary bits of a library science degree is in a library. If they hired anybody who showed proficiency in Dewey Decimal System, processing books and conservation, who would ever get a Master's Degree in it ever again? and of course, these are not a significant portion of the equation anymore.
- epalmer 10y ago
  Packrat I think this is very accurate. My daughter read your comment and agrees.
erikpukinskis 10y ago
You can search "library science masters curriculum" and see what courses they are taking. Librarians do a bunch of random stuff, from helping people with research projects to book preservation to running literacy programs.

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.