This comment gets to a point referring back to the "museum experience"
thread: "minor league" museums have work for people who need experience or
can afford to love the many advantages of those institutions. Right? "Major
league" institutions like the Field Museum can afford to offer their staff
much more in the way of security and pay, which adds to their competitive
standing as employers. Renowned museums, a more pompous term than major
league, are career plums for more reasons than just cash.
Anyone starting out in a field, who reads an article profiling one of the
outstandingly successful members of their prospective profession; looks at
that salary; and thinks, oh, yeah, starting wage fer sure; has a lot more
lumps coming to them than just that one. Obviously the person responsible
for the Sue exhibit is pulling down relative bank, and equally obviously
that salary is something a Fortune 500 CEO might sneeze. In terms of
placing the real-world pay scale, I think that careerbuilder.com did fine.
It doesn't seem to me, from the short short time I have spent in the museum
world, that very much education is required to enter it. Two of my dream
jobs didn't even require a college degree. The variety and number of
institutions is staggering, the possible niches are apparently limitless,
and the opportunity for success reaches modestly high. This is not a
sink-or-swim profession, nor does the phrase dog-eat-dog seem particularly
apt overall. Museum life is "cool," museum people are "cool;" given that
life is occasionally going to suck, and I'm likely to have to work hard and
swear a lot, I'm down with this act.
That's my twenty cents (I mean, really, isn't it time that phrase caught up
with inflation?) and thanks for your time. -S
-----Original Message-----
From: Deb Fuller [SMTP:[log in to unmask]]
Sent: Tuesday, June 20, 2000 4:33 AM
To: [log in to unmask]
Subject: Re: Museum Wages (was Re: MUSEUM-L Digest - 16 Jun 2000...)
In a message dated 6/19/00 10:27:39 PM Eastern Daylight Time,
[log in to unmask] writes:
> The thought that goes through my mind is: where were the course and
> career advisors when these people were signing up for graduate degrees
> in a profession that is in long supply and so notoriously low paid. I
> doubt that the advisors are working for "mid twenties compensation"
> but I don't recall a single message that mentions the poor advice, or
> any advice they were given before amassing a mountain of student loan
> debt.
Yep. And the sad thing is that careerbuilder.com did a feature on the
education director at the Field Museum in Chicago who was responsible for
the
Sue exhibit and listed her salary as $60k-$100K. If that is true, it is
surely exceptional as I know whole education departments that only have a
budget of $60K, which include employee salaries for a few educators. While
the inherent "coolness" of the job was highlighted, nothing was mentioned
about the museum careerfield in general being vastly underpaid for the
amount
of education that one needs to enter it. I was glad to see an article on
another, non-techie profession but I think the article made it seem like
all
museums pay that well or all jobs are as "cool", which we know, they
aren't.
Deb
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