I am halfway through my MLIS and am just considering studying something else. Always wanted to be a librarian, but finding a job in this market has been very difficult; I’m assuming it’s about to become virtually impossible.
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Can you explain the impact please for a non American? Presumably there’ll still be schools, so does that mean States become in charge of education? Does that mean school closures?
Conservative states rely more heavily on federal education dollars than liberal states. Red state students are going to lose about 1/4 to 1/3 of their funding.
States are still required (as of now) to provide an education to their kids. The Feds were responsible for part of the funding. They were already underfunded. There’s also the issue of civil rights —kids are supposed to have them. Now? Not so much.
Federal government heavily subsidizes state education.
Basically, the states are largely pass-through agencies for federal funds at multiple levels. Wealthy states have more independence, but the “50 independent states” thing works because the feds fully subsidize their governments.
Worth a mention that many blue states give more to the federal government than they receive, and largely subsidize many of the red states who take more than they give.
And the irony of this is that almost all red states except Texas and Florida have a state budget surplus and can exist without federal funding BUT…Florida will be in a deficit next year and Texas has lessened their budgets every year since 2019. MAGA dummies will expand
It’s hard, yeah, but not impossible. When I first started, we were in a recession. So I took two part time jobs just to get my foot in. I don’t regret doing it but I understand where you’re coming from
There is the possibility of working in LIS positions that don’t inherently seem like librarian positions, along the lines of corporate research and digital asset management, etc. Which is to say that if you want to continue per the time you’ve invested, there may be a way to ride out the storm? 💔❤️🩹
I’ve had my MLIS for 25 years and would encourage you to stick with it. There are a variety of avenues you might explore, and you’ll find a lot of job descriptions where hiring managers are asking for some other flavor of Master’s that still end up describing your skillset to a T.
I have always felt that people who could become librarians have superior organizational skills, can find out anything and can figure out how to preserve history. I’m not a librarian but I have great respect and admiration for those who are.
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Basically, the states are largely pass-through agencies for federal funds at multiple levels. Wealthy states have more independence, but the “50 independent states” thing works because the feds fully subsidize their governments.
Ed access & civil rights protections are at risk- the monitoring & enforcement was centralized at the Dept of Ed.
Funding to states is where most of the money goes (only 4k fed employees). The main way to impact the deficit/budget is to cut it.