4 ms·

My wife's about to hit a wall on pay increases at right at $40k if she doesn't get a master's degree. Never get another real raise, just sub-inflation bumps eve

My wife's about to hit a wall on pay increases at right at $40k if she doesn't get a master's degree. Never get another real raise, just sub-inflation bumps every year. With quite a damn while left until retirement. Mind, the master's degrees most teachers get aren't exactly hard—there's a giant market for easy-as-pie degrees for teachers for exactly this reason, and that's what most universities deliver and what most teachers go for since it's not like you get paid more if you do study in a real program—but you still have to pay for it, and it's not cheap on a teacher's salary.

simonsarris 7y ago
Why does the school require it? If everyone agrees its silly, why don't they just drop the requirement?
- shantly 7y ago
  Dunno, they all do it though. I know school stats report the % of teachers with higher degrees and of course they all want those percentages to be higher. Possibly there are state incentives. Mostly it's just a bunch of people doing dumb crap without anyone having the power & motivation to fix it so they can all knock it off, which is a pretty common phenomenon, actually. [EDIT] I mean to you wanna be the superintendent reporting that proportion of district teachers with master's degrees is up by seven percent since you started, or the one explaining that most of those degrees are bullshit and you don't care about it and neither should anyone else? Bear in mind most people have zero idea what teacher education looks like.
  - sgerenser 7y ago
    Yup. NC recently got rid of the automatic pay bump for having a masters degree while simultaneously increasing base teacher pay and there was a huge uproar over it. Nobody wants to lose their boondoggle.
    - shantly 7y ago
      Teachers' master's degrees are, in effect, a way to divert money from (mostly) teachers and (a little bit, some places) school districts to universities for no actual benefit, so that's great. Hope they manage to keep it up and that spreads. OTOH it'd be nice if there were still a way to reward teachers who'd done a real and relevant master's (which very few of them do now), but I don't think anyone's interested in nailing down that distinction. It's not even just degree mills, either, AFAIK the vast majority of postgraduate programs aimed at teachers are designed, primarily, to be pretty easy to pass and to have relatively low time commitments. They all want a piece of that action, and if they increase the rigor demand for their product will drop because a hypothetical very hard, non-bullshit teaching master's from a prestigious school brings the same pay bump as a very bullshit one from a third-rate state school.
      - robocat 7y ago
        > divert money from teachers and school districts to universities for no actual benefit, so that's great. Hope they manage to keep it up and that spreads. I am hearing sarcasm, which I would wish to encourage in the US, but it is possibly out of place on HN. So far New Orleans has been my favourite US location that seemed to have sarcasm as a culture (although I have sampled very little of the US).
- vvanders 7y ago
  I believe a portion of it ties into school accreditation.
- mcguire 7y ago
  Are you suggesting they dumb-down our educational system?! These are our children, our most important resource, we are talking about here!
  - shantly 7y ago
    You got hit with downvotes, but your (sarcastic) reaction is, as intended, spot on for the kind of thing no-one wants to risk hearing if they try to change the way higher degrees work in education. That the whole thing is an (expensive!) load of crap is 100% true, but that isn't widely known, I think, and trying to explain it's harder and riskier (for administrators & others with decision-making power) than just going along with the flow.
filmgirlcw 7y ago
Right -- if you want to get above that wall, you need a Masters. And many then go on to get an Ed.S (specialist) and even a Ph.D. As you say, there is a whole cottage industry of online accredited places (Liberty University, which I don't even consider to be the level of University of Phoenix, is accredited/recognized (unlike University of Phoenix) and used by MANY teachers in the state of Georgia, for instance -- I have a hunch there is some sort of financial relationship between the state and Liberty but I have no proof) -- some counties even offer easy access to loans/do tuition reimbursement.

simonsarris 7y ago

Why does the school require it? If everyone agrees its silly, why don't they just drop the requirement?

shantly 7y ago
Dunno, they all do it though. I know school stats report the % of teachers with higher degrees and of course they all want those percentages to be higher. Possibly there are state incentives. Mostly it's just a bunch of people doing dumb crap without anyone having the power & motivation to fix it so they can all knock it off, which is a pretty common phenomenon, actually. [EDIT] I mean to you wanna be the superintendent reporting that proportion of district teachers with master's degrees is up by seven percent since you started, or the one explaining that most of those degrees are bullshit and you don't care about it and neither should anyone else? Bear in mind most people have zero idea what teacher education looks like.
- sgerenser 7y ago
  Yup. NC recently got rid of the automatic pay bump for having a masters degree while simultaneously increasing base teacher pay and there was a huge uproar over it. Nobody wants to lose their boondoggle.
  - shantly 7y ago
    Teachers' master's degrees are, in effect, a way to divert money from (mostly) teachers and (a little bit, some places) school districts to universities for no actual benefit, so that's great. Hope they manage to keep it up and that spreads. OTOH it'd be nice if there were still a way to reward teachers who'd done a real and relevant master's (which very few of them do now), but I don't think anyone's interested in nailing down that distinction. It's not even just degree mills, either, AFAIK the vast majority of postgraduate programs aimed at teachers are designed, primarily, to be pretty easy to pass and to have relatively low time commitments. They all want a piece of that action, and if they increase the rigor demand for their product will drop because a hypothetical very hard, non-bullshit teaching master's from a prestigious school brings the same pay bump as a very bullshit one from a third-rate state school.
    - robocat 7y ago
      > divert money from teachers and school districts to universities for no actual benefit, so that's great. Hope they manage to keep it up and that spreads. I am hearing sarcasm, which I would wish to encourage in the US, but it is possibly out of place on HN. So far New Orleans has been my favourite US location that seemed to have sarcasm as a culture (although I have sampled very little of the US).
vvanders 7y ago
I believe a portion of it ties into school accreditation.
mcguire 7y ago
Are you suggesting they dumb-down our educational system?! These are our children, our most important resource, we are talking about here!
- shantly 7y ago
  You got hit with downvotes, but your (sarcastic) reaction is, as intended, spot on for the kind of thing no-one wants to risk hearing if they try to change the way higher degrees work in education. That the whole thing is an (expensive!) load of crap is 100% true, but that isn't widely known, I think, and trying to explain it's harder and riskier (for administrators & others with decision-making power) than just going along with the flow.

filmgirlcw 7y ago

Right -- if you want to get above that wall, you need a Masters. And many then go on to get an Ed.S (specialist) and even a Ph.D. As you say, there is a whole cottage industry of online accredited places (Liberty University, which I don't even consider to be the level of University of Phoenix, is accredited/recognized (unlike University of Phoenix) and used by MANY teachers in the state of Georgia, for instance -- I have a hunch there is some sort of financial relationship between the state and Liberty but I have no proof) -- some counties even offer easy access to loans/do tuition reimbursement.