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NYT has an editorial up now by a woman who moved to a small town in Arkansas where the town council wouldn’t approve a $25/hour salary for a head librarian beca

NYT has an editorial up now by a woman who moved to a small town in Arkansas where the town council wouldn’t approve a $25/hour salary for a head librarian because who needs that much money, what is she greedy, fancy college graduates think they run everything ... That’s extreme, but it’s generally true that salaries are better in cities than rural areas.

charia 7y ago
I read the same article and felt that conclusion the NYT was trying to portray was off/I took away a different perspective from the article. The first point being that a small town librarian one doesn't require a master's degree in the field. (Research libraries/big city libraries might differ) On paper she's overqualified to run a small town library and just because she has a degree doesn't mean that she should get paid more. Another factor is that the average wage in the area is around 12/13 dollars. For someone to be paid twice the average private sector wage for the area is quite significant. Especially when this is a small town and money that is paid for the librarian comes out of their budget and means an reallocation of resources from elsewhere. Tl;dr I'm not saying that the librarian should not get a pay raise to 25 an hour. What I am saying is that just b/c people are skeptical about wages doesn't mean that it's a direct correlation with them hating on college graduates/ect.
- earthboundkid 7y ago
  Whether someone is overqualified or overpaid depends on the other people available to do the job. For librarians, MA is not overqualified. It is qualified. As for $25/hr, the point of my argument was that in most of the USA, $25/hr is not an extravagant wage. It's pretty solidly middle class. It would be a lot if you're 22 and not much if you're 55. It's weird if rural America, this is consider "too much" for a head librarian. That shows that rural wages are way out of line with urban wages.
HillRat 7y ago
One of the people quoted in the article was incensed that a public employee would make around $41K per year. He’s a public employee making about $45K per year. There’s a definite “pull up the drawbridge” mentality in effect there.

charia 7y ago

I read the same article and felt that conclusion the NYT was trying to portray was off/I took away a different perspective from the article. The first point being that a small town librarian one doesn't require a master's degree in the field. (Research libraries/big city libraries might differ) On paper she's overqualified to run a small town library and just because she has a degree doesn't mean that she should get paid more. Another factor is that the average wage in the area is around 12/13 dollars. For someone to be paid twice the average private sector wage for the area is quite significant. Especially when this is a small town and money that is paid for the librarian comes out of their budget and means an reallocation of resources from elsewhere. Tl;dr I'm not saying that the librarian should not get a pay raise to 25 an hour. What I am saying is that just b/c people are skeptical about wages doesn't mean that it's a direct correlation with them hating on college graduates/ect.

earthboundkid 7y ago
Whether someone is overqualified or overpaid depends on the other people available to do the job. For librarians, MA is not overqualified. It is qualified. As for $25/hr, the point of my argument was that in most of the USA, $25/hr is not an extravagant wage. It's pretty solidly middle class. It would be a lot if you're 22 and not much if you're 55. It's weird if rural America, this is consider "too much" for a head librarian. That shows that rural wages are way out of line with urban wages.

HillRat 7y ago

One of the people quoted in the article was incensed that a public employee would make around $41K per year. He’s a public employee making about $45K per year. There’s a definite “pull up the drawbridge” mentality in effect there.