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Hello graduate students,
The close of the academic year is fast approaching, and that means graduation is around the corner. For many of you, with graduation comes the job hunt, and while much attention is given to the process of applying and interviewing, little is said about what to do to make sure you get the offer you want when hired. Because this is Money Smart Week (April 21-25) here at CU-Boulder, we decided to do our part with a financial theme for the April issue of Future 411. In particular, this edition focuses on the topic of salary and benefit negotiation, which can be a tricky subject for some and completely uncharted waters for most. It's often difficult to talk about money or even gauge your own value when starting a career, but we hope the following interviews and resources will help you to enter you search informed and empowered.
We are very excited to be able to bring you two very special interviews this month from experts brimming with useful information about financial savvy and salary tips. The University of Colorado system is fortunate to have a financial education expert on its staff, and we are grateful CU-Boulder alumna Katie Sauer found the time to share her knowledge of resources available to graduate students on campus and online. With so much attention being given to the gender wage gap in the news today, this newsletter wouldn't be complete without addressing the issue as well. Our interview with Annie Houle at WAGE (Women Are Getting Even) discusses the realities of the disparity in pay for men and women, why the gap affects both genders and the economy as a whole, and what women graduate students can do to prepare to advocate for themselves when negotiating their pay. This month's articles from The Chronicle of Higher Education, Inside Higher Ed, and Science Careers approach salary negotiation for alt-academic jobs, tenure-track faculty positions, and women aspiring to scientific research careers, respectively.
We hope you will read through our newsletter and be inspired to take advantage of the financial education opportunities at the many Money Smart Week events taking place on campus this week. Career Services also serves as a resource to prepare for any and all of your career development needs, including salary and benefit negotiation preparation, all year long. Please pay us a visit at our offices in the C4C when you are ready to talk money -- or resumes, or CVs or cover letters anything else that confounds you. We are here to help!
For those of you graduating, we offer early congratulations and wish you the best. Please do not forget that Career Services is here for alumni as well. Watch for one last issue for this academic year later in May before the summer makes an official start!
Best,
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Our Alumni
Getting a Financial Education
Interview by Annie Sugar
Katie Sauer began her college education at St. Cloud State University where she received her BA in Economics and continued her studies at CU-Boulder where she received both her MA ('03) and Ph.D. ('06) in Economics. She served as a faculty member at the University of Southern Indiana and Metropolitan State University of Denver before returning to the University of Colorado system last year to take her current job as Financial Education Program Director in Employee Services where Katie designs financial education for employees and retirees in the CU system and provides financial education for its students.
What makes you passionate about financial education?
Regardless of income, everyone pretty much has three concerns: the sufficiency of their money/resources (e.g. do I have enough?), the sustainability of their money/resources (e.g. how long will it last?), and the appropriateness of their financial decisions (e.g. is this the right decision for me?).
As an economist, I know that the "economic way of thinking" underpins good personal financial decision making, and I want to share that with people. Economics teaches that our resources are limited, so we must make choices about how to best use them. When we have to make a choice, we should evaluate the costs and benefits and trade-offs of that choice. We should also think through the consequences of the choice. In my role as an educator, I want to help people understand and (hopefully) make good personal financial choices. For me, being a financial educator is helping people apply the tools of economics in a very specific setting.
What does CU-Boulder offer in the way of financial education for students?
CU-Boulder has two main financial resources for students: CU Money Sense and the Office of Financial Aid. Basically, for all things related to student loans (from initial borrowing, deciding how much to borrow, and options for repayment), the Office of Financial Aid is the best resource for students. The Money Sense program offers resources for other aspects of personal finance, like budgeting or understanding credit. Both offices have online resources as well as workshops and one-on-one appointments. April 21-25 is CU Money Smart Week on the CU-Boulder campus so be on the lookout for activities and events.
Where can graduate students find out about opportunities to become more financially savvy and learn how to integrate financial preparation into their career preparation?
The Council of Graduate Schools launched GradSense earlier this year as a resource where graduate students can find a savings calculator, information on student loan repayment, and job tips. And as part of grant CU-Boulder recently received, the Graduate School is working to enhance its financial educational offerings for graduate students.
The Graduate School currently has a survey out to all graduate students regarding their personal finances. The results of this survey and a related survey last fall) will be used to plan programming. If you missed the survey in your email, it will be open through Friday, April 25, and you can access it here.
Another resource for CU-Boulder graduate students is a series of videos on Financial Transitions from Graduate School. Some of the videos are for all graduate students and some are specifically for those transitioning to a faculty position.
What part does salary and benefits research play in career planning and preparation?
It's good for students to know upfront what kind of starting salaries are common for their degree and occupation. This can help the weigh the costs and benefits of taking on student loans. The National Association of Colleges and Employers provides a useful website with salary data by degree, occupation, experience level, and location.
In terms of benefits, some are prevalent across employers (e.g. health insurance) but some vary greatly (e.g. daycare, vacation time). This link gives an overview of common benefits and the percent of employers offering each. While salary and benefits alone shouldn't determine if you pursue a particular career, it's still good to know the "financial landscape" of a career field in advance.
Why is salary and benefits negotiation an important part of interviewing skills? Are all salaries negotiable? What should an applicant do if they are told there is no opportunity to discuss or negotiate salary or benefits?
When you ask about salary and benefits, you are still in the interview process and many times are actually being evaluated on how you approach and discuss the topic. As part of your future job, you may need to ask for resources for a project you are working on or for your department. If you are timid or ill-prepared in asking about salary and benefits for yourself it may signal you won't speak up when you have resource needs while on the job.
Not all salaries are negotiable. Some employers, especially higher education, may have a pre-approved budget for the position and simply can't offer more. Benefits like health insurance and employer retirement contributions are rarely negotiable. At some places, vacation time is negotiable at others it isn't. It is absolutely okay to ask - but just be sure to first visit the Human Resources portion of the employer's website and see what you can learn about the benefits offered. The benefits listed on the Human Resources website are likely to not be negotiable, as they will apply to all employees. Benefits not listed may be better bets for negotiation. If there are no opportunity to negotiate salary and benefits (which isn't that uncommon), then ask about professional development opportunities such as funding to attend a conference or to take an online seminar as part of continuing your training and education.
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Guest Interview
Closing the Wage Gap
Interview by Annie Sugar
Annie Houle is the National Director of Campus and Community Initiatives for WAGE (Women Are Getting Even) which, along with the AAUW sponsors the $tart $mart Salary Negotiation Workshops designed to help women job seekers become proactive in closing the wage gap. Annie helped develop the $tart $mart workshops, has facilitated them in 46 states on over 250 campuses, and has trained over 1000 facilitators to assist in their delivery. She was kind enough to share statistics and other information about the wage gap and what WAGE and the AAUW are doing to close it.
What is the wage gap and why is it important? Who does it affect?
White women's earnings were 76.5 percent of all men's in 2012, compared to 77.0 percent in 2011, according to Census statistics released September 17, 2013 based on the median earnings of all full-time, year-round workers. In 2012 men's earnings were $49,398 and women's were $37,791, a difference of $11,607.
In 2012, the earnings of African American women were $33,885, 68.6 percent of all men's earnings, a slight decrease from 69.5 percent in 2011, and Latinas' earnings were $28,424, 57.5 percent of all men's earnings, a decrease from 60.2 percent in 2011. Asian American women's earnings of $45,586 were 92 percent of all men's earnings, an increase from 84.8 percent in 2011. The National Committee on Pay Equity's The Wage Gap Over Time shows how little the wage gap has changed in this century.
While occupational choice is said to account for some of this gap, studies continue to show women earning less than men in the same occupations. A report by Guidestar USA, made public September 16, 2013, shows women earning significantly less than men at nonprofit organizations, as reported by David Cay Johnston. Johnston's message to married men about why the wage gap matters to them: "Your working wives are getting shorted on pay, and that means your family has less money than it should."
The Institute for Women's Policy Research issued a new wage gap fact sheet, noting that most women working today will not see equal pay during their working lives. "If the pace of change in the annual earnings ratio continues at the same rate as it has since 1960, it will take another 45 years, until 2058, for men and women to reach parity."
Does the wage gap only affect women? What is being done to close the gap, and what can graduate students and those new to the job market do to help achieve pay equity?
Negotiating salaries is a challenge for women at all stages of their careers, since women are less likely than men to ask for what they deserve. AAUW research shows that, one year after graduation, young women earn just 82 percent of what their male counterparts earn and that the gender gap widens over the next 10 years. A young woman graduating today will earn roughly $1 million less than her male counterpart will over the course of her career because of this gap. The wage gap affects us all. When women don't get paid fairly their families and communities suffer as well.
Grad students need to prepare, do their research, and attend a $mart $tart workshop, if possible.
What is the $tart $mart program?
The $tart $mart campus initiative is a collaboration between AAUW and the WAGE Project, developed by WAGE to empower college women who are approaching the job market with the tools to negotiate salaries and benefits. AAUW and WAGE will facilitate workshops at campuses across the country with the help of AAUW members, who make up the majority of program facilitators.
The initiative includes $tart $mart campus workshops and $tart $mart Facilitator trainings. The workshops are nuts-and-bolts trainings designed to help young women obtain fair and realistic salaries. WAGE staff have hosted $tart $mart salary negotiation workshops on more than 228 campuses throughout the United States, including CU-Boulder. The workshop explains the consequences of the gender wage gap for young women and teaches personal budgeting, compensation benchmarking, and skills for negotiating salary and benefits focus on the details of salary negotiation.
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Professional Advice
Chronicle of Higher Education
The #Alt-Ac Track: Negotiating Your 'Alternative Academic' Appointment
By Bethany Nowviskie
By now, avid ProfHacker readers will have encountered the cipher "#alt-ac:" a neologism and Twitter hashtag that marks conversations about "alternate academic" careers for humanities scholars. Here, "alternate" typically denotes neither adjunct teaching positions nor wholly non-academic (what-color-is-your-parachute, maybe-should-have-gotten-an-MBA) jobs-about which, in comparison, advice is easy to find.
Instead, the #alt-ac label speaks to to a broad set of hybrid, humanities-oriented professions centered in and around the academy, in which there are rich opportunities to put deep-often doctoral-level-training in scholarly disciplines to use. Recent #alt-ac conversation online additionally tends to focus on the digital humanities, a community of practice marrying sophisticated understanding of traditional disciplines with new tools and methods. The digital humanities constitute, in my opinion, the best gig in town-attracting scholars who exhibit restless, interdisciplinary curiosity, mastery of relevant research tools and methods (old and new), and uncommon comfort-in a world that defines expertise like this-with a general assumption that practitioners are jacks-of-all-trades.
If they are to serve us well, academic IT, libraries, publishing, humanities labs and centers, funders and foundations, focused research projects, cultural heritage institutions, and higher ed administration require a healthy influx of people who understand scholarship and teaching from the inside. That our culture for many years has labeled these people "failed academics" is a failure of imagination. Those who gravitate toward #alt-ac positions during or after completing graduate study are often driven to set things in motion in the academic environment, and to set things right. Couple the attractive #alt-ac mission of building systems(social, scholarly, administrative, technical) with an exceptionally sorry academic job market, and it becomes clear that more and more graduate students, post-docs, junior faculty, and underemployed lecturers will be stepping off the straight and narrow path to tenure. Read more
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Inside Higher Ed
Negotiation Tips for New Faculty
By Elizabeth H. Simmons
During my first few years at Michigan State, I hired over a dozen tenure-stream faculty members. At first, taking the part of the employer in the negotiations surrounding the hire was a new experience for me.
However, as I gained familiarity with the role, I realized that those sitting opposite me (so to speak) were still as new to the negotiation experience as I had initially been. That made my task more difficult than necessary. If your negotiation partner does not comprehend the process, she or he will make elementary mistakes that are challenging to correct later. This is especially frustrating because you both want the same outcome: a successful hire who becomes a thriving faculty member.
Finding out late in the game that someone had an unannounced dual-career issue or that they had not explained all of their professional needs upfront could put me in an awkward position: there might be insufficient time to arrange a partner/spouse accommodation or I might have already asked the upper administration to approve a specific start-up package.
I decided to start providing a negotiation tip sheet to anyone to whom I was making a tenure-track faculty offer. Without having made a detailed study of the result, I can say that in the ensuing years the new faculty members have done a better job of making their professional needs clear to me during the negotiation process. This, to me, is a success. It enables us to arrange the start of their career in the college in a way that will be clear to them and support their future success.
This article reviews the essential elements of my negotiation tip sheet. Because there are a number of excellent books on general-purpose negotiation skills (such as Getting to Yes and Ask for It), I recommend that anyone not familiar with the principles of interest-based negotiation read one of them forthwith. This article gives specificity to those principles by outlining how they apply within the context of negotiating the starting conditions for a tenure-system faculty position. Read More
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Science Careers
Cutting the Gender Scissors
By Dick van Vlooten
Women are good scientists and good networkers. Good networking capacity is important in science. Yet only a few women in science ever make it to professor.
Science's Next Wave has published a lot on the women-in-science issue. We've even dedicated a whole index page to the subject. Each of these articles uses a different approach, but they've all come to a common observation: that women are underrepresented at the scientific top, despite the fact that more than half of the (European) student population is female
The European Report on Science and Technology Indicators shows that the distribution of men and women follows a scissors?shaped trend towards higher positions (see Figure 1). Every female professor is matched by 9 male colleagues
So where are all the talented women going? Apparently not moving on to careers in business or government. Datafrom the Interparliamentary Union show that only 15% of people working in parliaments worldwide are women. Likewise, the Catalyst reports that only 10.2% of the seats in top management of large firms is taken by women. Given that (according to the American Central Intelligence Agency) the average global male/female ratio is 0.99, the question is: why aren't more women working in higher positions, whether it's in science or somewhere else?
I've always wondered whether it has something to do with networking. So I did some research to see if I could bring the influence of gender differences in networking to the surface. As a result, I've come up with some advice--for both men and women--to make sure that networking is not an obstacle to women's rise. Read More
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Contact Us
Annie Sugar, Editor, PhD Candidate, Media Studies, Journalism and Mass Communication
Annie Piatt, Graduate Student Program Manager and Career Counselor
Center for Community, N352
Appointments: 303-492-6541
Office Hours:
Fall & Spring: Monday, Tuesday, Thursday, 8 a.m. - 5 p.m.
Wednesday, 8 a.m. - 7 p.m.
Friday, 8 a.m. - 4 p.m.
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