>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!) - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - 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 E: [log in to unmask] Visit our Web site at: http://www.state.nd.us/hist/ - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - -