Around here (Brazil), psychologists come to mind. The degree alone is worth jack shit, healthcare plans will usually pay lunch money per 1h session 3 months after said session, advertising psy services super regulated, patients have a significant chance of ghosting you, the federal council is great at fucking up graduates and workers, rather than protecting them, and most people would rather do any sort of trendy stupid holistic shit like familiar constellation, NLP, reiki and whatnot.
Source: had a gf with said degree and a postgrad in neuropsychology. Of her graduating class of 8, only 1 found “success” so to speak.
That’s an interesting one. As a psychotherapist from Germany I can say we’re definitely not low paid, but it is much less than other academic professions, and especially in relation to the time it takes to get qualified (roughly 10 years) and the cost of approbation itself (varies from 30k-160k, and that’s in a country where education usually is free) it’s really not a good fit for someone who is very financially motivated. (Ironically because of the high upfront cost the job tends to attract people from well endowed backgrounds though.)
I think like in many helping professions we have a majority of very idealistic people who don’t negotiate very well. Employers get away with way too much because refusal at our side at first only ever hurts the patients, so we kinda keep up with it. Maybe something similar is happening in the professions that are in my mind actually the most underpaid for their time, and that’s nursing and care work of all sorts.
Ironically, behind all this is a misconception that we’re actually constantly working on with our patients. The truth is that the clinics would function better and we could offer better therapy if, for example, we weren’t so overworked and enough staff were employed. But in order to achieve this, we would have to make decisions again and again in specific cases, which are less pleasant for patients in the short term. Specifically: saying no to our employers more often, strikes, and in the worst case resignation. Sensible in the long term, unpleasant in the short term. For our patients. And that’s the crux of it.
Unfortunately it is always easier to discover those mistakes in the thinking of others. I have met dozens of colleagues who avoid fighting for better working conditions for precisely these reasons (while advising their patients to avoid this error in particular). And clinics of course know this and take advantage of it.
So better negotiation skills are really only party of the solution (although also very important). I think in the long term we need better education and more focus on socialist ideas, specifically on how and why employee rights (and the ability to self-care) are such an integral requirement to a job well done.
Fantastic thought-provoking points here. You’re right, that’s something I had kinda forgotten about when I wrote before:
Helping-professionals are (ideally) in those professions to help people, so their employers essentially hold patients/clients/students up as shields.
You’re right, to change things would require a cultural shift that sees providers as “people” rather than “services.” But generally it would be an extremely difficult PR war to sell to the people who require such services.
The soulless bosses are basically comic book villains: They know heroes will put themselves at considerable risk for the greater good, but won’t risk the harming of innocents…
…so the greedy ownership class hides behind those innocents and, what’s worse, trains them to accept such a low standard that any action that would drop that standard would turn the peoples’ anger against the heroes who already sacrifice so much to help them.
I hate not knowing what to do past understanding what’s so wrong. :(
Oh longer than that. Look at what party leads in wanting to defund education but fund private paid education. The same party who is voted in by the uneducated, who famously are lacking in critical thinking and reasoning skills.
It’s in their best interest to keep a low educated population who happily go to work and believe what they’re told.
Teachers are horrendously underpaid, but they need to stop complaining about the “hours”. It rings disingenuous to most who know the job.
Unless they are taking afterschool roles they work generally 8-3:00 with a potentially a few hours of work after for grading and lesson planning. This is along with numerous holidays / admin days during the school year.
I say this knowing personally a few teachers who complain about hours, and it seems to be a cultural thing not based in their reported real experiences.
The salary is shit, at least for non-senior roles in my state, but that is not a lot of hours relative to the average wage earner.
I know two teachers personally. This is not the case in my discussions with them and others. Maybe you can enlighten me on what does take 10 hours of time daily?
From speaking them they are absolutely not working from 8:0am - 6:00pm on every day.
Lesson plans are inherited from prior teachers and … yes continuously updated during the year but not at a major time cost every day. Grading takes a few hours for one day either on the weekend or in the evening.
And yes they complain about it constantly… it seems more a cultural thing. They also complain about other teachers complaining 🤣
I’m not touching the issue of summers off because yes that is a different thing, and yes it’s quite hard for them to get real employment.
Again salaries should be higher and support teachers not assuming they can work in the summer… but why conflate this with the daily hours ( which are frankly good as stated by those who I know in the profession as a reason they like and took the job)
As a European, could you explain College degree, graduate, post graduate, etc. ? We have Bachelor’s and Master’s degree here, I thought we got that from you?
I’ve heard zoo keeper can be insanely competitive just to get a $0 internship or even pay money to work there and then the real jobs are also poverty level to work with animals.
This right here. I took an EMT course at the local community college in 1999, then learned that the pay was minimum wage. Never got a job as an EMT because I needed more money to live.
Been this guy in a place where we were even written out of labor laws and started in the early 90’s. When I started I made $6.50/hr and worked 168 hrs per two week rotation as an EMT. As. paramedic after I paid for my own education I got a raise to $8. It was brutal and we were the highest paid in our area. Some were getting $0.60/hr standby and $50 per call in rural areas where you would at that time get a call or two a week.
In the US, most professors are part time adjunct and get no health benefits. Probably make 30-50k.
Tenured faculty at major universities make 70-90k.
Considering these jobs requires at least 9 years of uni (in the US), the lifetime income of professors is still very low.
RE TAs: I US stem fields TAs work 20h and make 15-30k. That usually includes free tuition, but not in all states (e.g. in Texas, you sometimes pay tuition out of your TA pay, which is crazy)
When I left academia to go to the private sector, I got a 40% bump in pay, and worked at least 30% less. And I didn’t have to write grants to support my program. When I was an academic, I thought people never came back to academia from the private sector because they couldn’t. I quickly found out that it was because they’d have to be crazy to come back. I wouldn’t have returned to the university for anything less than an endowed chair. And that was NOT going to happen.
I’m almost the same story. Now I have great pay, fully remote, and a position where I’m respected, without competing egos, and folks want what I have to offer.
Kinda a tangent, but my department was always having guest speakers come from “alternative careers” but none were better paying or higher status than a professorship. Usually park rangers or low paying consulting things. Maybe I just had bad luck, but it really pushed the narrative that there were no opportunities out there. I’d love to give that talk to a department of PhD students, to give them my perspective if what’s important from the outside looking in.
Teaching, 100%. Incredibly important, some of the most dedicated people in any field, and they’re paid peanuts. Oh yeah, and they work like 12 hours a day. The way we treat them is a disgrace.
In North Carolina, most teachers have been required to have their Masters degree and additional training, but average less than 30k in my area. Some only make 17k a year.
Teachers for sure. Highly educated people providing a service that’s absolutely crucial for everybody and they’re paid like shit even before you consider the number of out-of-work hours they end up working.
It’s the worst of all angles… Professions where the professional loves the work and wants to do the work no matter what get exploited more than most AND with public school teachers, they’re stuck with taxpayer decided budgets…
As far as America goes: I WANT EVERYTHING AND I DON’T WANT TO PAY TAXES FOR IT!
I’m guessing you are joking but I’m not really sure. Point is, I educated myself for a really long time and then I won a position in an orchestra, and my salary is now very low, in comparison. There are other benefits though so I’m not really complaining.
As an ex social worker in Sweden (both as a case officer and treatment assistant), I can attest to the low pay, garbage benefits (if any) and extremely stressful work.
Pilots. It’s been some time since I read about it. I read some of the small puddle jumper pilots make so little they qualify for SNAP. Sure flying the big boys makes a bunch of money though.
In Australia any lab technician positions 4 year degree and start at AUD$65k, Max out at $80k or so. Equivalent engineering degrees max out at $120k for plebs.
Which is crazy, because it widely depends on the district.
You could be in rurals-ville, FlyoverState, USA and make a pittance. (Oh plus BTW, the excitement of torches and pitchforks coming for you, your staff, and your collection. Politicians also attempting to undermine the entire institution of libraries for strategic mob-outrage points. Ah, perks!)
Or in some urban areas that are well-funded, librarians and especially branch managers are paid stupidly well. Their jobs mostly being general management duties, listening to the complaints of the insane and unreasonable, tresspassing the insane and unreasonable, and answering “Do you work here? Where’s the bathroom?” Of course, that’s when they’re not stuck in pointless meetings.
Lots of stress sometimes. But BMs make low six-figures. I imagine there’s worse jobs.
But it’s one of those things where a spot usually opens up only if someone moves, retires, or expires.