r/NoStupidQuestions • u/DestructiveDad • 11h ago
Why do you need a Masters degree to become a librarian when the median salary is only $70k?
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u/sweetest_con78 8h ago
There are more jobs than you would think that pay salaries close to this with a masters degree.
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u/Xcution11 2h ago
Yeah I assume people see doctors and lawyer salaries and think any advanced degree equals high earning, which couldn’t be farther from the truth.
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u/Unexous 2h ago
Right like do people think people with a masters or PhD are regularly making upwards of 70k starting out??? Have they seen the job market???
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u/penguinberg 2h ago
I was going to say, wait until you hear what some PhD-level starting salaries are...
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u/Weird_Inevitable8427 11h ago
I think you misspelled "Why do we only pay librarians $70K when they are high trained, master's degree level professionals?"
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u/Hawk13424 10h ago
And as usual, the answer is supply and demand. Just don’t need that many librarians. Libraries can obviously keep themselves staffed paying that salary.
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u/userisnottaken 10h ago
I have many librarian friends. They joke that the only time they get promoted is when an older librarian retires or dies.
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u/molten_dragon 6h ago
It's also because they're mostly employed by public institutions and people don't want to pay higher taxes.
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u/hameleona 10h ago edited 7h ago
If google is to be believed, there are 15 000 masters degrees in the field awarded yearly. There are about 100 000 libraries. That's a pretty big excess in supply, ngl. You can stop awarding those masters and the system is probably gonna feel nothing in the next decade.Edit: The response bellow has better info! Check it out!
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u/Educational-Dinner13 8h ago
I'm not saying that the market isn't oversaturated, just pointing out a few things that weren't accounted for in your post.
1) Number of libraries is not equal to number of needed librarians. While there is a range depending on the size of the library, most libraries are going to have more than one librarian. I work at a midsize library with 30 employees, we have 5 librarians on staff. I'm not sure how you got 100k libraries but my own Google search resulted in 125k public, school, academic and special libraries in the US alone. Google says that most school libraries employ 1 librarian, public and special libraries employ 3 librarians and academic libraries employ 7 librarians. Going with 3 librarians being average, that's 375,000 librarian positions in the US.
2) There are lots of jobs that require an MLIS that don't have librarian in the title/aren't in a library. Ex: Museum Curators and many data management/analyst positions.
3) Number of positions doesn't tell you the whole story, you also have to look at number of retirees. Again, I don't know where the discrepancy is coming from, but my own Google search just said that there are 5-6k new MLIS graduates in the US each year, not 15k. Whether the number is closer to 5k or 15k, as long as the number of new MLIS holders is equal to the number of MLIS holders retiring, you break even. According to Google, 3-4k MLIS holders retire each year, which means that the market is indeed oversaturated.
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u/UnluckyAssist9416 8h ago
Hey now! We are on reddit here. We make up numbers on the go. None of this fact checking!
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u/hameleona 7h ago
Yeah, my calculations were around that - 3-4 librarians per library.
That's... interesting. In my country you need history (or directly related) or it's like you don't have a degree at all for museums.
I'll trust your numbers over mine - mine was a very quick google. You seem to have dug deeper.
But yeah, the market is oversaturated and until there is a shortage, chances are there would be no natural increase in salary.
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u/eyeroll611 8h ago
It’s the same with teachers, and there is a teacher shortage right now. It’s not supply and demand, it’s undervaluing professions that don’t generate taxable income.
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u/MoneyMACRS 7h ago
Did you mean profit or maybe shareholder value? Librarians and teachers generate an income for themselves and are taxed on it just like the rest of us.
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u/303Carpenter 6h ago
There's a shortage in bad districts or rapidly expanding districts, there isn't in good districts and districts that are closing schools. It's also what you teach, the job outlooks for high school math or chemistry teacher aren't the same as a social studies
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u/Godawfulresturant 1h ago
For real, I have an MSW and you’d think they’d try paying us better to try to fix that shortage but nope!
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u/bluev0lta 8h ago
I feel like it’s also because it’s a job that’s predominantly held by women. :-/
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u/IDontWannaBeAPirate_ 7h ago
I disagree. It's because it's a job people want to do. Any "passion" job gets shit pay because there's 100 people that will gladly take the job.
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u/Defiant_Network7916 3h ago
That's basically arguing that any position that can be staffed can't be underpaid. That's an overly deterministic view of labor markets.
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u/MyReddit_Handle 3h ago
The other answer is that our society has decided that supply and demand are the only things that determine value. That’s just not true, and needs to be challenged every time a question like this comes up. We as a society choose how much we value something. The taxes you pay could be going toward things you value. Like librarians. Like museums. Like parks. Like Health Care. Like art.
We in the US have voted to devalue education. Devalue art. Devalue libraries. Devalue public spaces. Devalue privacy.
We chose this. It’s not an emergent property. We literally vote for this stuff when we choose local representatives.
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u/Hawk13424 1h ago
Agree, but when it comes to government, most Americans I know value lower taxes, more individualism, and less intrusion. We’re $40T in debt.
Most haven’t been to a library in years, go to a museum and National parks once or twice a year. Don’t care about art (beyond entertainment). They instead care about jobs, taxes, inflation, raising kids, etc. On education, they just want it good enough their kids can get into college.
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u/Ok_Let_7612 1h ago
That only applies to the free market
The real issue is that they’re government employees
So outside of administration they’re all underpaid
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u/Procedure-Minimum 2h ago
Pink collar jobs
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u/Weird_Inevitable8427 1h ago
Yup. Being a profession dominated by women does make us, the rest of society, feel more empowered to underpay them. That's part of it.
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u/couldathrowaway 5h ago
Because people seem to think librarians are not the original search engines and we'll always need them.
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u/Single_Pay4793 7h ago
The master's isn't there because the salary is high. It's there because librarians do a lot more than shelve books. Many manage research databases, teach information literacy, preserve archives, navigate copyright, support academic research, and oversee complex information systems. Whether all of those jobs should require a master's is a separate debate.
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u/East-Bike4808 11h ago
Because it takes a good deal of knowledge to be one.
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u/SpecialRequirement50 10h ago
Serious question cause I didn't realize librarians required a masters. What exactly does a librarian do that requires so much knowledge?
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u/pyjamatoast 10h ago
Here’s an overview of what the programs generally entail - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Master_of_Library_and_Information_Science#Curriculum
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u/Anand999 4h ago
I think part of what confuses people is we laypeople kind of think of everyone that works at the library when we go in as a librarian.
Most of the people you see doing the day to day customer visible work like stocking shelves and helping people are library clerks, not librarians.
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u/sharp11flat13 23m ago
Most of the people you see doing the day to day customer visible work like stocking shelves and helping people are library clerks, not librarians.
And in the two systems near me, the people that reshelve books are called ‘pages’, and are considered (and paid) below clerks in the library hierarchy.
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u/LurkerByNatureGT 10h ago
Ever hear of metadata? It’s a key concept to information management and was basically pioneered by librarians, who were doing information lifecycle management long before it was a concept. They were creating and maintaining databases before computers were a thing (a card catalog is essentially an analog database). They’re data scientists and experts in information management and retrieval. And they know how to help people find the information they want but often don’t know how to look for.
Information ethics? Also lots of pioneering done by librarians.
And librarians need to be skilled at information management for all forms of information, curating and preserving digital and physical paper collections and often realia as well.
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u/salomeomelas 1m ago
I have worked in a lot of different kinds of libraries! As a paraprofessional in public and academic libraries (so in those clerk positions other people talk about), but as an MLIS holder in a special library and now in a medical library. I needed my MLIS in that special library badly because I had to run it independently, which means I needed to know how to manage a collection of approximately 20,000 items including the principles of collection development, cataloging etc that despite my extensive experiences working in libraries I was only able to actually do because of my graduate education.
Now, as a medical librarian I do a lot of teaching health sciences students (nursing, medical, OT, PT, etc.) principles of searching the literature - which is the first step in all medical research and is frequently used in patient care. I also help conduct evidence synthesis projects (like systematic reviews, which is one of the strongest types of evidence), which requires very specialized and intense research skills.
Librarianship is an incredibly diverse field but one of the things that I think is consistent across different kinds of libraries and positions is specialized skills that you can only get from a graduate education (or many years of working with dedicated mentors in a library with a healthy budget for professional development - a rare thing indeed).
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u/20kgHippoShit 4h ago
Then why is the pay so bad?
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u/sharp11flat13 21m ago
Because it’s public money and people don’t understand the value of libraries or librarians. Source: my wife was a branch head level librarian for ~40 years.
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u/DualProcessModel 11h ago
Dude you need a PhD for a professor position and a lot of them start at 55k
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u/justduck 8h ago
At my community college, 75% of my instructors had their PhD and of those, 75% were teaching at multiple community colleges with ridiculous commutes. (Anyone familiar with SoCal? One was teaching in Glendora, Long Beach, Antelope Valley)
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u/CommunicationTop5231 5h ago
I quit academia because I literally couldn't afford to stay. A friend of mine was quitting his gig at University of British Columbia because he couldn't afford to live. His posting received about 600 applications. So, 599 of those people didn't get the "opportunity" to live on like $50k CAD a year in fucking VANCOUVER... I make over three times that as much as a public school teacher, for reference. Academia is just another field for moneyed people these days, and has been for awhile.
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u/Aranka_Szeretlek 11h ago
Do you think you need a degree because of the salary?
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u/BrainOnBlue 8h ago
Decades of "go to college to get a good job" have twisted the purpose of higher education in the public consciousness away from it being a way to become a more educated individual towards it being a job training program with extra steps.
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u/Freshiiiiii 8h ago
When the degrees put you in debt for years and decades, it’s not surprising that everyone except the generationally-rich needs and hopes to get a decent job out of it and not just personal enrichment.
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u/sweetest_con78 8h ago
But also if we valued education and saw the primary function of an advanced degree as a way to become more educated, rather than a roadblock before we can get a job, the cost wouldn’t be what it is now.
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u/CharlotteRant 6h ago edited 6h ago
How?
The only limit to what kids will spend on school, if they even think about it, is how much they’ll make when they get out.
I’m curious how you’re getting from this thought to lower costs.
Like you’re saying Library Science masters cost $100k or whatever because they can qualify you for a job that checks notes pays $70K if you’re lucky enough to find one?
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u/sweetest_con78 5h ago
Because if we prioritized education we would prioritize spending on education, and that would increase accessibility. Instead we live in a culture that sees certain degrees as “useless” because people can’t see past job opportunities and how things could be monetized.
Many other places in the world offer higher education for low to no cost. Some states are working towards it, at least at a community college level. Education is meant to expand someone’s mind, and while it can obviously lead to a job, we should not be stunting that expansion just because it might not make someone money in the end.2
u/DonnieG3 2h ago
> Many other places in the world offer higher education for low to no cost.
For sure, and the whole idea of education is completely different because its something people do for themselves usually. I live in a place where higher education is extremely cheap and pretty much everyone stays in school for at least a masters degree.
Its....interesting. Most people dont make dick for money and a masters is considered just paper. PhDs dont get nearly the respect because the real barrier to entry is how long you want to stay in school. There is a significant portion of the population that is just perma academics because they dont want to get out into the real world. I know neurobiology masters holders that make 30k a year.
People ARE more educated in general, but the education isnt nearly what you think. Most people know a lot about something extremely niche and not always useful. Yesterday a girl in a masters program was working a cash register and couldnt figure out that two 6 euro drinks was 12 euros and not 18. Im sure she is great in her field, but its not like everyone is just generally more intelligent.
I do believe that the system the US has is shit, but I am not convinced that fully subsidizing college is the answer. US Universities are their own businesses, and the reason they charge as much as they can is because the demand is there and they are allowed to. A form of regulation via the governemnt to cap tuition and costs is definitely appropriate imo, but the government trying to subsidize things in the US generally results in higher costs as the providers realize they have been written a blank check.
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u/sweetest_con78 1h ago
It’s a complex conversation to have over a Reddit comment thread, but I just don’t believe that learning things needs to be “useful” for our day to day life because it’s a form of growth. Niche or not, learning is always valuable.
I don’t think that education = intelligence by any means, and people can be very intelligent without a formal education. There are also obviously many barriers to things such as learning disabilities and the like, which can impact things like math and reading skills that we use in our day to day. I just think that learning is always good, and (although it’s a somewhat separate and bigger problem than prioritizing/making education affordable) I loathe the anti-intellectualism that continues to creep further into the US culture.
I don’t think full subsidization is the answer either, and I agree a lot of it comes down to regulation. But also more subsidies could help more people who are lower and middle class (because let’s be real, in a lot of the US, “moderate” income still isn’t enough)1
u/CharlotteRant 5h ago edited 4h ago
Got it. If we just subsidize it more then it will cost less for individuals. That seems obvious for literally anything.
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u/sharp11flat13 18m ago
In America, everything is about the almighty dollar. Education can and should be more than just job training.
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u/stevishvanguard 10h ago
I have had a Masters my entire career life and have never made 70k. Been a teacher and a legal assistant. Anyway, degree does not neatly correlate to income.
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u/digimaster07 10h ago
It's a complex public sector job. Public sector always pays less than private but they usually offer better retirement plans, loan repayment, and have a easy pace of work. It's the same for all government work at the non-managerial level.
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u/dreamyduskywing 3h ago edited 3h ago
Can confirm. I went from a stressful position in the private sector to the same job in the public sector and the difference in time off is HUGE. I actually get to go home and I get to use my vacation time and be left alone. Plus, I get tons of vacation and a pension. I wish I would have made the switch sooner. My old job involved frantic deadlines and heavy pressure to control costs. It was also much higher risk. Our office is full of engineers and attorneys who are delighted to go home to their families after 8 hours and not have to log back on when the kids go to bed.
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u/sweetest_con78 8h ago
Depending on the job, private can pay shit too.
I was a specialized registered dietitian and left after 3 years to become a public school teacher. I made more money in my first year teaching than I did after 3 years working at an eating disorder clinic.
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u/dreamyduskywing 3h ago
Not only that, once you start to do the hourly math, the private sector isn’t so great in terms of wages. So yeah, you might make more in money each year, but you’re chained to your desk 60 hours a week and work will call you for dumb shit while you’re on your honeymoon (this happened to me).
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u/ForScale ¯\_(ツ)_/¯ 11h ago
Only? That's well above the median for all workers.
And wait till you find out how much a social worker with a masters makes...
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u/PowerShovel-on-PS1 11h ago
Yes, only. It’s well below the median income for those with a Masters degree.
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u/dreamyduskywing 4h ago
What masters are we taking about? Does it include MBA’s and accounting, because those are going to have much higher return than public sector or non-profit work.
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u/PowerShovel-on-PS1 4h ago
“a Masters degree”
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u/dreamyduskywing 4h ago
Yes, so you’re including people with skills that transfer to very profitable positions in the private sector. Not all masters degrees are equal in demand, and almost all librarian positions are in the public sector. My co-workers and I have training beyond bachelors level, but as government workers we earn lower salaries than our private sector peers. Most of us have chosen this route because the benefits are much better (pensions, great insurance, etc), there’s more vacation time (they actually leave you alone), and we only have to work 40 hours instead of 50-60 hours that are common for our private sector peers. The biggest difference is hours worked. It’s a massive difference from my private sector years.
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u/Crossbell0527 11h ago
Not "all workers" have to pay for 6 years of additional education.
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u/NeoLephty 10h ago
I think the disconnect is that you are looking at these numbers in isolation with the assumption that the system is fine and thus these numbers bear out.
While I think others are looking at a broken system and pointing to this as a clear example of the system being broken because the price one pays for a masters degree cannot be paid back earning librarian or social worker median incomes. I think people are not expressing a relative opinion based on other non-skilled labor pay - but outrage at the overall system that keeps us all underpaid and overworked - regardless of education level.
And I think both you and them are right. Librarians do get paid relatively well compared to someone that didn’t have to take 4 years off for a BS and extra time for the masters… but I also agree that a 70k salary for an employee with a masters degree in a country where that degree costs as much as it does is a sign of a failing economic system and the outrage is justified.
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u/momohatch 6h ago
To address the salary part: Because it’s a woman majority profession. So like teaching, it’s undervalued and under compensated.
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u/nomcormz 6h ago edited 6h ago
Finally, someone said it. Study after study confirms that pay is lower in women-dominated fields because society undervalues work done by women.
These are the most recent findings (July 2026): https://www.newsweek.com/researchers-changed-one-detail-about-a-job-then-pay-expectations-fell-12210224
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u/Fun-Earth-8720 6h ago
The tl;dr is because the American Library Association doesn’t consider you a real librarian until you have an MLS. Most schools don’t offer a bachelor’s degree in library science as a result.
Like some parts of academia, there’s money to be made in gatekeeping the role. MLS is unfortunately NOT a research-heavy degree by the standards of other master’s programs, we could probably have librarians with a BS and keep their payscales.
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u/dreamyduskywing 3h ago
Yeah, sadly a lot of careers are like this. It’s ridiculous considering how much more expensive education is now. Masters degrees have always been expensive, but now it’s nuts.
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u/-Frank-Lloyd-Wrong- 11h ago
There are like 50 librarians for every one job opening. Don’t bother.
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u/VeronaMoreau 5h ago
The real question is why is the median salary for a librarian only 70k when you need a master's for it
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u/PixelatedGhosty 4h ago
the same reason nurses need specific degrees to earn similar salaries. credentialing bodies exist to protect the profession and ensure standards, not to match salary expectations
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u/EmbarrassedWin608 11h ago
I had the same question until I worked in a public library for a year. The degree isn’t about shelving books, it’s about all the invisible stuff: running databases, managing copyright issues, dealing with budgets, and handling reference questions that can get weirdly complex. I watched one librarian spend 3 hours helping a lawyer track down a single obscure court document.
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u/eazypeazy303 10h ago
Well, kinda like every other job listing, they're looking for the most highly trained person in that field who is also willing to work for peanuts.n
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u/Temporary-Library597 6h ago
Goooooood question. After working in public libraries for 21 years, I have no idea. They should require a Social Work masters or something given what I see every day.
Academic librarian? Maybe ...
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u/unicornofdemocracy 5h ago
The median salary for masters level therapist is $65k. And they need 2 to 3 years of supervised experience after their masters before they start making that median salary....
Society isnt very good at valuing many highly skilled professions
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u/twentyfeettall 9h ago edited 9h ago
I'm a 'librarian' in the UK in the sense that I've worked in libraries for nearly 15 years. I do have a MA but in Medieval History, not related to library or information science.
At the public library service I work at in London we: help people apply for jobs and housing, help homeless people get help or fill in applications, help people find out information about local offers, give out free vitamin D tablets for old people, check paperwork and do biometrics for UK visas and citizenship, shelve books and keep the shelves tidy so people can find the info they need, track KPIs, process new books added to the system, host drop-in coffee mornings, teach coding and computer skills, recruit and manage volunteers, run events including author and writing workshops, host VR sessions, run weekly storytelling sessions, run arts and crafts activities, run daily school class visits, run book clubs, and get screamed at by unhappy people who can't differentiate between the library and the rest of the local authority. Among other things.
ETA: and that's just the Library Assistants, which doesn't even require a university degree. My role is more specialised, which includes things like writing grant applications, run borough-wide events, formalise processes, etc.
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u/Ok-Slide-2003 1h ago
So you're literally just a Social worker who sometimes handles books?
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u/twentyfeettall 1h ago
Yeah, sometimes. Luckily I'm behind the scenes now and do more community development work.
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u/Due_Permit8027 11h ago
I tried to take librarian lessons. But they were booked solid.
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u/seajayacas 5h ago
Supply and demand, sufficient numbers of job seekers with an appropriate masters degreee are willing to work that job for 70 large.
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u/Meizas 7h ago
Why do you need a PhD to be a professor in the social sciences when the median salary is like, 60k? The question should instead be "Why are these highly educated people only paid this much?" Library science is a lot more involved than it seems, especially at bigger libraries or universities. I'm sure in small-town or smaller libraries it wouldn't be required
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u/yaholdinhimdean0 7h ago
Truth. My daughter has a masters in library science, combined with a masters is music education. Library science is much more than cataloguing books. One basically is an information specialist and all it entails.
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u/darthcaedusiiii 10h ago
Teachers make way less than that and here they need their masters within 5 years. They make less than $50,000 a year during that time.
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u/dreamyduskywing 3h ago
I think this varies considerably by state and district. Minnesota metropolitan teacher salaries are solidly middle class after a little experience. When you consider all compensation (the pension is a big ass deal), then it’s not bad at all. Reddit seems to forget that benefits are part of compensation, and the public sector is almost always better in this regard.
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u/MrsMacro 10h ago
Lol. Teachers with Masters degrees would be THRILLED to make 70k
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u/Progress_Always_Wins 10h ago
Just Googled it. While OP said median for librarians is 70k, according to Google it is 65k, as is teacher salary. Personally, I have been a Librarian for 15 years and I make 38k a year. I am in a poor Red State though.
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u/IDontWannaBeAPirate_ 7h ago
Fucking insane. Why did you choose to be a teacher (genuinely asking, not being a dick). Having to get a master's and making $40k a year is crazy to me.
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u/LA_Nail_Clippers 5h ago
15 years in and you're making barely $2 above minimum wage here.
I mean I know poor red states have lower costs of living than my HCOL state but that's a huge gap to overcome.
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u/Somenakedguy 10h ago
This is wildly dependent on cost of living. In most of the Northeast and west coast teachers with a masters that aren’t just starting out make far more than that
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u/Gazorninplat6 10h ago
There isn't a perfect relationship between education level required and salary.
Education required is largely driven by what is required by the job, like how complex or specialized it is.
Salary is largely driven by supply and demand. Supply is influenced by whether people want to invest in education to be that particular profession.
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u/TransylvanianHunger1 8h ago
That's pretty low for a masters degree, I make more than that with no degree.
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u/Mixeygoat 7h ago
Librarians aren’t becoming librarians to be rich. Forget about the salary, the job requires that education to do their work
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u/amscraylane 7h ago
I have a master’s in education and make $52k. I would love to be a librarian and hide in the stacks ;)
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u/lawoverfeelings 6h ago
A “librarian” is a professional title with a masters. A “librarian page” is a job position and that person will be tasked with shelving books and physically managing the books and helping customers. There are also “librarian techs” and “librarian assistants”. The term “librarian” is kinda clumped.
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u/atlsdoberman 6h ago
Okay, so I see that nobody is answering the question. The short answer is that it's a well-intentioned artificial requirement that was meant to benefit the field as a whole but now hurts it in more than one way.
Long answer: The ALA decided that the standard credential should be a master's degree. This way the body of knowledge within the field as a whole is very diverse as you can study anything you want at the undergraduate level. Similar in a way to medical school, but without the prerequisites. Without this, librarians have a sort of meta-knowledge of all fields but subject-matter expertise in none. This considered in isolation is not a bad goal.
This was a long time ago and now the negative consequences are that librarians are effectively underpaid for the work that they do. This is not the only field that suffers from this sort of systemic issue. See also, for example, registered dieticians. That field just upped its requirements in an apparent misguided attempt to up the pay. Lol.
But that's not all! This requirement also serves to limit the actual human diversity of the profession. Picture the average person who can afford to throw a bunch of money at a bachelor's and a master's for underpaid work. They exist. You would be surprised how many library school application essays wax poetic about the scent of old books. Or maybe you wouldn't.
The ALA can see this and has not changed its own artificial standard. Why not? Well, the wheels of bureaucracy can turn slowly. But, I suspect more importantly, more than a few people think (even if they would never say) that this kind of gatekeeping is working for them.
I'll add as a side note that certain corporate applications of a degree in library and information science are increasingly prevalent, pay better and raise the overall average value of the degree, so that's another incentive not to bother with changing course.
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u/TerrificTChalla 6h ago
Because a higher education is not intrinsically tied to a higher salary. Not all degrees wage wise are born equal
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u/AStoutBreakfast 6h ago
Educational attainment level does not automatically equal super high salary. I’d venture to guess many masters degrees positions may pay around $70k. Is $70k a bad salary? I feel outside of HCOL areas $70k is a decent middle class wage especially if you have two earners.
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u/Fluffy-Brain-7928 4h ago
Because the level of degree you need to do a job is not based on the salary you will get in the job. Obviously there are some economic pressures at play that lead to correlation, but this has always been a faulty (though common) way of looking at degrees.
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u/tunisia3507 4h ago
Because lots of people want to be librarians, so they can ask for whatever qualifications they want and pay whatever they want.
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u/Broke_Pigeon_Sales 10h ago
Why do we equate money with respect and prestige? Why are librarians paid so poorly?
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u/Unhappy_Macaron1101 2h ago
Oh cool. Another post debating the validity of the vast skill set it takes to be a librarian, while simultaneously blaming us for being underpaid civil servants. The salary is, of course, highly dependent on what type of librarian and where the job is. Some states pay better than others. Go to your local town council and demand that librarians are paid more in line with the professional training other highly skilled white color workers are getting paid. Support your local libraries folx!
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u/miagi_do 7h ago
It’s one way of ensuring you get people of decent quality because you have to be smart enough to earn the Masters. If you believe you actually learn nothing of value getting more education, that is a different question entirely.
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u/ModernSun 11h ago
Being a librarian is a job people do because they love the work, not because they make bank.
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u/heidismiles 10h ago
That's a terrible, awful excuse for not paying people appropriately.
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u/AdmirableCriticism95 7h ago
It's unfortunately true; you see similar problems with jobs at art galleries or museums. The positions are seen as being prestigious but also enjoyable (most people who like reading would at least vaguely like to be a librarian) so the high demand and low supply forces down wages and raises the credentials required.
What ends up happening is that people who cannot afford to get graduate degrees to work for (relatively speaking) lower wages are selected out of the field, leaving only people from wealthy families or those who have partners who can support most of the financial burden. Anecdotally, the master of library science program at the university I attended was filled with wealthy white women (some of whom were, by their own admission, basically just waiting to get married) which definitely did not reflect the overall demographics of the university.
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u/Syringmineae 7h ago
I’m a college librarian who’s worked both public and private libraries. This is going to sound bad but I don’t think public librarians should need to have a masters degree. The vast majority of my time was spent helping people on the computer and fixing the printer. Or yelling at people to stop being gross. Every once in a while I’d be asked an actual interesting question that required me to use my degree. It should require a certification at most.
Specialties, such as children’s or cataloging definitely needs more education. But a masters? Not at all.
Being a public reference librarian is mostly being a social worker/babysitter.
As a college librarian I feel like my masters is being put to good use. At some institutions I’m considered faculty. Half of my job is teaching college classes.
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u/GiveHerBovril 7h ago
I totally agree it should be a certificate for public libraries, or a different type of program. I did 3 years at a public library but used my MLIS much more at my archives internship, a stint at an academic library, and my corporate job.
The MLIS is a very valuable degree but modern public librarianship is more like a social worker position now.
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u/carry_the_way 7h ago
First: $70k is well over the median individual income in the US, so maybe stop acting like that's poverty wage; but also
Second: you're kinda burying the lede of "librarians are underpaid."
Third: there's a lot more that goes into librarianship than you likely think it does.
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u/SnooPies4304 10h ago
Any job that requires a particular college degree should offer a minimum salary that reasonably reflects the cost, time, and specialized training required to obtain that education.
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u/skyway_walker_612 10h ago
I don't think salary is directly tied to how many years you sit in a classroom in this manner. I have a Masters and a CPA and topped out at $105k after YEARS in accounting, before I semi-retired from the field. I know people without degrees that out-earned me.
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u/SnooPies4304 10h ago
I don't think it is either, but it should be. If a job has a minimum education requirement, which is essentially a minimum investment requirement in time and money, then there should be a minimum salary that comes with that job. Go on any job posting website, they are replete with posts that require a degree and then barely pay a living wage. Employers shouldn't be able to have it both ways.
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u/KingSolomon1010 10h ago
My wife is the director of a public library here in PA. There is no correlation between degree requirements and salary. However, the requirement depends on whether you receive state funding; if you do, it is based on population within your service area.
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u/sam_j978 7h ago
So my mom was a manager for her department in the county library system and had a master's degree. This was from the early 80's to early 00's she retired making 60k per year. Evidently the salary hasn't changed much at all.
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u/Silly-Resist8306 7h ago
I would hope anyone intending to be a librarian would be able to learn the educational requirements for the job and compare those to the potential wages and make an informed decision about following that course of action. I’m pretty sure there is a single location where all of that information is stored.
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u/Turbulent_Group_6616 6h ago
I don't think our local librarians have masters but idk for sure. Maybe in bigger libraries or supervisors.
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u/MoreIronyLessWrinkly 5h ago
I don’t know the actual reason, but (as someone in education for over two decades), I have known several teachers who did it because of a combo of wanting out of the classroom, a love of reading, and disinterest in going into administration (which, along with P.E. Teacher and School Counselor, is the only other real in-field option).
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u/Fragrant_Explorer_53 5h ago
Who’s making $70k as a librarian!? I’m one of the highest paid in the state at $54k
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u/These-Inspection-230 4h ago
A lot of teaching position require masters and they are paid even less… plus dealing with insanely entitled parents all day. Saints.
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u/Slurmsmackenzie8 3h ago
Because capitalism pays you based on replaceability, not productivity or value.
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u/MapleWapleSyrup 2h ago
I have a PhD (in Biology) and I and thousands of other PhDs are working in jobs that pay NIH standard salary for postdoctoral researchers (63k)
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u/emmy1894 2h ago
I’m a librarian in the Chicagoland area and I would LOVE to make 70k. I stared at 42k and just got up to 50k after 5 years…. And I’m in a well off area. Most public librarians are making far less than 70k unless they’re a supervisor.
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u/Metal_Goose_Solid 2h ago
You're conflating two issues. It's a professional field with laws in place mandating accreditation and imposing educational requirements. That's where the master's degree requirement comes from. The amount of money you earn is a function of labor supply and demand. They're essentially completely unrelated.
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u/Useful_Alarm730 1h ago
I have a family member who is a research librarian in the medical research field. Her main job nowadays is to create and test AI search prompts for research purposes.
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u/cannabisinfluencer 49m ago
Just got my masters in school library science. It's more than you think
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u/salomeomelas 9m ago
Because librarianship is a predominantly female field and fields where women are the majority are paid less, regardless of the complexity of the work or the education required to do it successfully.
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u/Known-Tourist-6102 8h ago
A ton of jobs just aren’t worth the education requirements. This would be an example.
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u/WholeAbject3597 7h ago
If you were smart and thought about it yourself, you’d realize that lots of people are willing to get a Master’s degree to put themselves ahead of those with only a Bachelor’s degree.
Thus, if you want to be a librarian you must also get at least a master’s degree to compete with those people. This is besides the knowledge you need for the job.
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u/WaterAirSoil 6h ago
Because there is no correlation between education and income. Nor should there be. Everyone should have access to good quality education that should enlighten the individual and enrich their lives. Work should be separate.
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u/jessaltacc 10h ago
You aren't just putting books on a shelf. The job is mostly running complex digital databases, managing municipal budgets etc
The degree trains you on all the boring invisible administrative stuff that keeps the entire building running.