16th April 2012, 09:10 AM
kevin wooldridge Wrote:ummmm...I can see where your idea is coming from but wonder if the reverse isn't true. In this time of increased student fees and decreasing employment opportunities shouldn't the profession be arguing for a raising of academic standards for new entrants rather than a lowering. I am just thinking that the kind of kick that archaeology needs to get out of the rut of 16k salaries and closer to the national average wage is actually a shortage of available staff and a batch of cash-desperate MA graduates with 50 or 60k debts rather than the piddling 27k that undergrads bring to the table...
I don't necessarily think that there's any direct correlation between the level of indebtedness of new entrants and pay rates. I think it would be dangerous to assume that wages would automatically rise simply because every new digger had an MA and debts of ?50,000 - after all, if that were the case, wages would have risen with the introduction of tuition fees, and would have risen again when they were increased, simply because the average digger owed a lot more money at the start of their career. And we all know that this didn't happen.
I'm always slightly uneasy when people decide to pursue an MA or a PhD to try to further their career - sure, a few of them make it into academia, but many more seem to end up back digging again, only with much higher levels of debt. For example, I know a couple of people who did post-grad courses in osteology, only to find that when they finished, there were very few jobs available in that field. I'm not suggesting that post-grad qualifications are a waste, as education's never a bad thing in itself, but I would say that anyone undertaking such a course should think carefully about what they'd want to do afterwards, and whether there are jobs available, rather than assuming that just because you have a higher qualification and owe more money, you'll automatically get paid more.
You know Marcus. He once got lost in his own museum