>It is rather unfortunate that government bureaucracy does
>not allow for their positions to be filled with the best
>qualified.  But that's nothing new.

It is truly unfortunate.  It means that to get really good
people (which we have accomplished), one has to write
application requirements and advertisements very
thoughtfully, and use interviews, writing tests, and other
mechanisms carefully.

To the extent that we regularly get "dinged" in grant
application reviews by our peers for not having enough
graduate degree holders on staff (especially PhDs), there is
little motivation in terms of the industry standard for us
to hire applicants with experience and no degree(s).  We had
an Associate Curator on staff for 39 1/2 years - he had a BA
and an incredible wealth of knowledge about our collections
based on decades of research - but EVERY grant application
filed during the eight years we worked together which listed
him as a staff member resulted in reviewers' comments about
how he lacked appropriate education!

>...deal with this problem by allowing experience over the
>minimum to be counted as years toward a degree, but some (I
>assume the Feds and at least one of the Dakotas) do not.
>Maybe they should.

We certainly could deal with the problem this way, but
wouldn't it make just as much sense for the "duffer" to get
some continuing education - a standard in many professions -
so that the problem didn't exist in the first place?  Why is
solution of this problem only the responsibility of the
institution doing the hiring, and not of the applicant and
the profession?  The Curator noted above caused me some
problems in grant applications, and I couldn't get him to go
to any training, even with full support.  It wasn't a
problem for him because he didn't want to move to another
job, and by the time I began to work with him he was
coasting to retirement - he still knew an incredible amount,
and we still draw on him for research whenever we can talk
him into coming in (Yes, some people DO retire to North
Dakota, although with a -70 degree wind chill this morning,
I'm not sure why).

Chris Dill (brrrr!)

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C. L. Dill, Museum Director
State Historical Society of North Dakota
612 East Boulevard
Bismarck  ND  58505-0830
P: (701)328-2666
F: (701)328-3710
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Visit our Web site at: http://www.state.nd.us/hist/
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