Inside Higher Ed has a recent article entitled "More Jobs, Fewer New PhDs," which sounds almost upbeat (for history PhDs, that is) until you actually read it. A sampling:
"Even while there was good news on the job market, historians were considering less favorable developments for their profession. At one session, data from the AHA showed that the percentage of historians at four-year colleges working part-time increased to 25 percent in 2003, up from 6 percent in 1979. At two-year colleges, the percentage working part time has always been higher — and was 68 percent in 2003. Even full-time employment doesn’t mean tenure track. Of those at four-year institutions in full-time jobs, 14 percent are off the tenure track.
Even more striking were statistics released comparing the gaps between the highest paid history professors at public and private institutions and the lowest paid full-time instructor. The data came from the College and University Professional Association for Human Resources and did not include names. At both public and private institutions, gains for the lowest paid instructors were modest over the last 20 years, especially when accounting for inflation. Not so for the fortunate highest paid history professors.
Highs and Lows for History Salaries
| Position | Salary 1985-6 | Salary 2005-6 |
| Lowest instructor — public | $15,324 | $21,410 |
| Highest professor — public | $69,200 | $237,766 |
| Lowest instructor — private | $11,700 | $27,000 |
| Highest professor — private | $86,200 | $193,000" |
The key fact I pull from this is that if you have a PhD, especially in the humanities, you'll be fortunate to get any job and most likely your job will suck. Been that way for years, and it's not changing now. How long until the failed academics start migrating out of the dust bowl of academic teaching jobs to the relative plenty of library jobs?
Some librarians resent failed academics who move into librarianship. I myself have ridiculed those failed academics who somehow think their narrow academic training automatically qualifies them for a cushy library job when they really know nothing about libraries. Academic libraries need highly educated librarians; what they don't need are resentful snobs who can't make the cut as professors but somehow think they're too good to be mere librarians. But looking at trends in the humanities over the last 20 years, it should be obvious why some academics choose to become librarians.
The salary figures above are less revealing than they seem, since I'm not sure it really makes sense to compare the lowest instructor with the highest professor (why not compare the highest of each, or the lowest professor with the highest instructor?), but still it's almost definitely the case that a good academic librarian with a PhD has a much better chance of attaining a decent salary and job security than a PhD looking for the right teaching job, especially with the rise in adjunct and part-time work among academics. (As noted in another recent IHD article: "more than 62 percent of all faculty members are off the tenure track, including nearly 30 percent of those with full-time positions, according to an analysis released today by the American Association of University Professors.") The standards and the competition in libraries are just a lot lower. What a lot of academic part timers don't know is that the work is considerably less stressful than teaching, though it's also less rewarding for people who like to teach real subjects in college.
Plenty of PhDs don't want to go on to get yet another degree, especially one as dull as the MLS. That's certainly understandable, but otherwise it's difficult, at least for now, for such people to get good library jobs. So, despite the CLIR Fellowship, which invites humanities PhDs to apply for postdocs in libraries and archives, I haven't notice a stampeding herd of underemployed adjunct and part-time PhDs leaving their crappy teaching jobs for slightly less crappy library jobs. They probably feel they would lose prestige if instead of reporting to the IRS their $25K salary as an adjunct "college professor" they had to report their $50K salary as a "librarian," plus had to work summers.
But I've certainly known a number of people who would have preferred to be a professor to being a librarian but also wanted decent pay and job security. If the floodgates ever break and people realize how easy library work is, then academic librarians with just an MLS could face a lot of problems in the future. Competition for the really good library jobs can already be stiff, not as fierce as for teaching jobs in history or English, but still very competitive.
There was some discussion on the ACRL-EBSS listserv last September (see threads 16,17, and 27) about a doctorate being required for tenure at a second-tier state university for what was essentially an elementary school library job. (A very weird job posting, by the way.) The various respondents got a little confused as "PhD" and "Doctorate" somehow became synonymous, but the discussion of appropriate credentialing for academic librarians was interesting nonetheless. (The job asks for a "doctorate," and some assumed that meant a PhD, whereas in fact an EdD would do, which is not at all the same thing academically or intellectually, especially if you manage to get it from one of those online joints.) If one has to have a doctorate to get tenured at the low level state universities (formerly known as normal schools) in Pennsylvania, what will librarians eventually need at good universities--two doctorates? A PhD and an EdD? A PhD in library science and a PhD in a real subject? Who knows.
Is this the wave of future? Don't ask me. I said don't ask me! But as the standards continue to rise in academia and the PhDs keep coming and getting a decent teaching job becomes ever more a matter of chance, how long will be it be before the poor sods who can't make the tenure track realize that with another year of schooling they can hang out in a university three levels above what they could achieve as a professor with more money and more job security? If only they can admit to being librarians for the rest of their lives.
22 comments:
I'm a failed academic. I was more or less shoved out the door with a masters. I planned to go to library school during the second year of my masters program. I never felt I deserved a librarian job without the MLS.
I never felt ashamed of my choice--especially among my doctorate aspiring peers. A few weeks ago, I googled them and most are working as either department assistants (yep, administrative assistants!), editors, or low-level study abroad administrative posts. Coming from that environment, I'm glad I chose this route.
I knew library school was going to be insipid and pretty darn easy. It was playtime compared to my subject masters degree.
I meant to say "low-level study abroad administrators"
You can see why I was booted out of my program :)
"...data from the AHA showed that..." *eye roll* Me talk pretty one day too.
As Mr. Mackey would say, math is hard, mmmmkay? But with the slightest bit of exponential functions we determine the average yearly raise for the highest paid private sector profs over 20 years was 4% For the lowest paid? 4.3%. Excelsior! Power to the people!
Now on to our public sector friends. Highest paid profs enjoyed a sweet 6.3% annual raise, yet their low end brethren only sopped up 1.7% more per annum at that guv'mint trough. "NO!" I hear you say. "How can this be? The workers control the means of…” I suspect that the highest paid professor at state universities is a football or basketball coach and the insane escalation of these salaries 1985-2005 skews the numbers mightily.
So ends our lesson--those salary numbers are fraught with meaninglessness, other than the societal truths elucidated by AL.
Finally, as a prestige enhancer all those old Teacher's Colleges should be known as "Poop Creek Ècole Normale." Then again, teaching "norms" might be useful in many contexts.
--Taupey
Thanks for doing the math, Taupey! I guess it wasn't the quantitative historians reporting this stuff.
And most of my old grad school acquaintances either left with the MA and are now doing all sorts of unpleasant jobs, from lawyer to "community organizer," whatever the heck that is. The ones who hung on and managed to get teaching jobs are teaching in places so awful just thinking about it depresses me. And lucky me gets to work in the library, where I'm warm and dry and don't have to can peas or anything.
Oh yeah, I forgot about the few who got tenure-track jobs. It took them several years to land positions and they also live in undesirable locales. The junior professor who is still at my ol' institution has aged rapidly in ten years.
If I had to do it all over again, I would have eschewed the humanities and studied something like speech pathology.
I like the "warm and dry" sentiment. I guess I would only add I am now middle class. Yay for me!
Like first anonymous, I walked out with my first subject masters, and went on to library school. I got out of a doctoral program, in large measure due to the dismal market. Ok, that, and at least in terms of instruction, it's teaching, but without the aggravation of grading. Like anonymous too, you best get your MLS for the job. Yes, it was a walk in the park to get it (compared to my very intensive MLS and coursework in the doctoral I dropped). Never looked back. Sure, I would love to move to a better library, but otherwise, it has been a good choice, and clearly, do not need any doctorate. Wish I had known it a bit sooner, but que sera sera.
Anyways, what abundance of library jobs were you referring to, AL? Or did I just slip and not notice your irony in the statement? Sure, there may be more than for those humanities PhD's, but not that much more. Not that they will get a clue. As you point out, they would rather be lowly paid adjuncts who can claim to be called professor than librarians. Works fine for me, since, guess who gets to show them how to do their research? Yes, little old me. But that is another story.
Oops, meant to say intensive MA, not MLS.
Relative plenty, DWB. Meaning library jobs are less scarce than tenure-track teaching jobs in the humanities. Of course, that's not saying much.
AL--some canapes with that martini?
You reminded me of a particularly sublime martini I had one night at Gustavino's (in the vaults under the Queensborough Bridge). Angy rivulets of cold rain traced down the towering windows--and there I sat, warm & dry and not having to can peas.
--Taupey
AL wrote: "library jobs are less scarce than tenure-track teaching jobs in the humanities".
Well, I'm from a different continent. I'd say: over here there are even less jobs for, say, "academic librarians with a PhD in history" than for "tenuered professors of history".
"Going librarian" is certainly not a good way to get out of unemployment or precarious employment for people who'd prefer to be a professor (as many of them wouldn't become good and happy librarians). But it probably is a good way for somebody who wsants to do "something useful" after several years of research ... .
I am also like first anonymous and got out with a MA. Tried the PhD route, and realized that there was no chance of getting a job. Both and old professor and my wife suggested archives. So....
I have to disagree with Taupey, AHA getsd its stats from history departments, not the universities, so they will be pretty accurate stats.
I had a friend in Lib School that had her PhD in history and couldn't find a job. She is a P-T Lib school student and full time secretary at... a university library. I silently laff to think that she has more credentials than her boss, but just doesn't have the MLS.
AS for jobs, let me tell you as few library jobs that they are, it is alot more than F-T history jobs. One example, One university I attended had over 150 applicants for 1 European history position.
I am the first poster--janitorx. I forgot to submit my proper identity.
Anyway, our circulation supervisor has an MA in history (and started at PhD program, but we suspect he failed his generals) and has repeatedly tried to get promoted to librarian, but it will never happen. As much as we all dog the MLS here at the AL blog of enlightenment, I would never hire this guy as a librarian without the degree. In the time he has been here he's managed to botch up our inventory procedures via our ILS, screw up managing our e-resources (I've since then inherited the duty!), and has a crappy work ethic that would make the laziest librarian seem like a workaholic. Granted, this is a sample of one and someone who, at the age of 41, has never had a real job prior to coming on board, but still, how could someone suck this badly?
It seems to me there are a lot of librarian jobs, but virtually none at the entry-level. In the ol' south we pay entry-level salaries and require 2 years experience for the privilege of jumping on the tenure track. Yeah, the cost of living here is cheaper, but that salary is an insult.
I agree. As much as I mock the MLS, and justifiably I think, having one does show at least a minimum of dedication to the field and a minimum of knowledge about how libraries work. Historians tend to already know a lot about library research, but that's different from knowing more broadly how libraries function and what librarians actually do.
"having one does show at least a minimum of dedication to the field and a minimum of knowledge [...]"
But isn't that true of all Master's degrees? It's only a beginning. No one can read and understand all the literature in his or her field in just one or two years, and anyone who says he did is lying.
I forgot to add our circulation supervisor doesn't understand how to answer reference questions either! I cringe at his online responses and I often have to follow up on his answers to our online patrons.
There's a rumor he's applied for some distance ed job--dog help those students!
Oh, sorry, I interreted the sentence: "The data came from the College and University Professional Association for Human Resources and did not include names." to mean "The data came from the College and University Professional Association for Human Resources and did not include names." rather than the actual meaning "These data are limited to history profesors only."
--Taupey
interpreted
professors
"never enough time to do it right, always enough time to do it over"
*sigh*
I tried to suggest poor job prospects to a young woman working in a library who wanted to get a PhD in history rather than go to library school. She just smiled. At 22, they all want to be poor and living in an apartment 3 blocks off campus. By the time they see the error, the college loans are due, the boyfriend's left, and the girlfriends are living in suburbia driving a Lexis SUV.
I get so appalled by reading these blogs on how someone with an MLS is a far superior librarian because of the degree alone. I myself happen to have an MBA( which is 66 credits at a Masters level and not the 30 for an MLS) plus have over 15 years experience at all levels of librarianship from intern to Director. Yet most librarians will not consider me one.
I have had no desire to obtain an MLS degree because frankly I know everything I need to know from the 8 libraries I have worked for and returning to school at upwards of $1000 a credit is a joke.
There are many people qualified in library skills with vary undergraduate and graduate degrees and these people need to be accepted as librarians.
Nope -- the title comes with the degree. If you don't have the degree you aren't a librarian. I have both a subject masters and library degree and they were very different animals but the library degree is very necessary. There are lots of paralegals that now more than licensed lawyers but they can't practice law; lots of nurses, pharmacists and PAs that know more than doctors but they aren't MDs. Lots of security guards that know more than police officers....
That sounds like it's straight out of the ALA talking points memo, but neglects the reality that there are plenty of PhD holders working in libraries as librarians and often getting paid more and doing higher level work than librarians with an MLS. Saying they're not "librarians" is just a case of semantics.
I'm not saying I agree, necessarily. I'm just saying that is the way it works and if we don't value the degree, if we don't demand standards in library school education, if we don't require any qualifications then we lessen and devalue ourselves and we all better pony up and start working on those PhDs.
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