Landing a job with the National Park Service requires some 'privilege,' according to our guest writer/Rebecca Latson file
Privilege: A Required Qualification to Work with the National Park Service
By Ashley Daffron
Graduate Student in Conservation Leadership at Colorado State University
In the breakroom, grumbling with my fellow park rangers about how expensive living outside Arches National Park was, everyone shared personal information about making ends meet. We were all childless, from upper and middle-class families, and all but one of us were white. And we all had one thing in common: every one of us had financial support to meet our basic expenses—a second job, a partner with a well-paying job, or, in my case, parents who supplemented my income. Without this support, none of us would have been able to work for the National Park Service (NPS).
You need an incredible amount of privilege to work for the NPS. I had the right combination of privilege to snag a job as a Fee Technician at Arches National Park because I had the support and resources, the right connections, and parents who could help. For many, especially people of color, this isn’t the case. The NPS has many barriers that prevent underrepresented and underprivileged groups from entering its workforce—the current hiring structure, relocation requirements, and low-paying entry-level jobs are a few. With a staff that is over 75 percent white, it is clear that the NPS must tackle these institutional barriers to remove “privilege” from its list of required qualifications.
The National Park Service workforce is more than 75 percent white, according to the annual Best Places to Work in Federal Government survey.
The NPS’s hiring process deters certain candidates. I recently heard from a colleague that he asked current rangers for advice when he applied to work with the NPS. The top answer? Learn how to use USAJobs. Most jobs with the NPS require applicants to apply through USAJobs.gov, the federal government’s hiring website. The website is anything but user-friendly. Research on the federal hiring process describes USAJobs as challenging to navigate and notes that it doesn’t provide enough search mechanisms to help applicants discover jobs that align with their interests and skills. The study found job descriptions containing over 1,500 words, and many were “‘barely comprehensible’ to an untrained reader.”
If the applicant manages to successfully navigate USAJobs, after submitting their application, they are met with competency assessments (think SAT exams) that can take up to five hours to complete. When I took these assessments, I questioned how badly I wanted this job when one of the questions required me to make a seating chart for foreign diplomats with a complex list of rules to follow. But the real question is—who is this process really weeding out? Seen as a “learned skill, not a genuine measure of competency”, these standardized assessments are less about a candidate’s job-relevant skills and more about their ability to test well or access to the resources to do well.
If the applicant is lucky enough to land a park service job, chances are they’ll have to move to do it. For many, moving to a national park is fulfilling a bucket list item, but for others, it means leaving their community, family, support system, and even ancestral land behind. Many permanent NPS staff start their careers in seasonal positions, moving to different parks with each new position. Research has shown that for many Black adults, where they live, and their community significantly influences their self-perception. Similarly, Indigenous women are recognized as essential pillars in their communities, and moving from their communities to foreign ones is a difficult decision, one that often is not a prized choice. Within many of these underrepresented groups, community is incredibly important, and having to leave them is a significant barrier that keeps these diverse candidates out of the NPS.
National park gateway towns like Moab, Utah, can be prohibitively expensive for park staff on low salaries/Kurt Repanshek file
Many NPS positions typically require a bachelor’s degree or a few years of specialized experience, usually through underpaid internships and entry-level jobs. In my case, as an entry-level employee, I earned about $20,000 less than the livable wage in Utah. Most of my coworkers on the same pay scale, including myself, were spending almost if not a whole paycheck just on rent in Moab. Even with support from my family, this played a large part in why I left the park service after only a year. An article in High Country News described these jobs as “‘the playground of rich white kids,’ whose family support makes the low pay tolerable.” The folks who can afford to take these jobs, especially seasonal positions, get a leg up when applying for more senior or permanent positions in the agency, thereby perpetuating the privileged nature of the agency.
Privilege is the unspoken required qualification to work at the National Park Service. The NPS needs to reform its hiring process and make USAJobs more accessible to a wider audience, create better opportunities for candidates from underrepresented groups, and create entry-level positions that pay a living wage. While the agency claims it is working towards creating a more inclusive workforce, the NPS will only meet this goal once this issue of privilege is addressed.
Comments
Work a trail crew. Had a Rhodes scholar and an orphan on the crew one year
so privlaged- we had no uniform...
did a "log run" one year and worked sunup to sundown for no overtime pay...
"create better opportunities for candidates from underrepresented groups, and create entry-level positions that pay a living wage. While the agency claims it is working towards creating a more inclusive workforce, the NPS will only meet this goal once this issue of privilege is addressed."
So, the NPS should replace past racist practices (as you described them) with your preferred, enlightened racist practices?
Sorry, NOT IN MY NAME!
It's 2024...let's do better. The NPS should hire the best qualiifed candidates. If it's not doing that, let's fix it, not replace it with some new version of racism. Race, ethnicity, religous affilliations, orientation, group identities--they have NO place in filling a modern, public workforce. In fact, such employment considerations are clearly illegal, unconstitutional, and IMMORAL.
There is nothing more inclusive than earned merit.
This article reads like the author already had an opinion and then simply cherry-picked nuggets of data and other opinionated sources (e.g.- high country news; anpr.org) to support their point of view. Using the same strategy, one could easily cite the NPS article "By the Numbers" (https://www.nps.gov/articles/000/by-the-numbers.htm), and write an Op-Ed about the demise of the male population in the NPS since the 1970s.
Unfortunately, the qualification/work issues in the NPS are not that simple. I performed staffing services for the NPS for 2+ decades, including many recruitment efforts and many federal application workshops, and there's no single root cause that led to today's workforce. Sure, there were instances of nepotism and cronyism that aggravated me. But there were also far too many discriminatory instances of hiring individuals because of their 'diversity'...meaning they were not white males. Overall, the most common non-merit-based hiring reason that I saw on a recurring basis was what I called 'candidate mobility'...the willingness of individuals to take jobs without the availability of govt housing and nearby services. I used to tell students that they don't have to be the best applicant. They just need to invest in a good used pickup truck and small travel trailer. Those investments, moreso than skillset or skin color/sex, will usually afford them the luxury of choosing the jobs/locations of NPS employment.
THe NPS needs to find a way to make park housing affordable. If housing rates are tied to the local economy, then park housing takes up an inordinate amount of the paycheck for a lower level employee. At the National level, Superintendents have been told that park rents should not take up more than 30% of take home income-However, when the questions are asked as to how to lower these rents answers are not forthcoming. The fall back is always "DOI needs to ask OPM for an exception." This apparently never happens, and even if it did, the process would take so much time that it does not help seasonals. ALl this talk about more and better park housing is useless if lower grades can't afford to live in park housing.
Nail on the head. I'm not sure what some of the other comments are trying to say, and most of them obviously have not been rangers. This year we had a 5% pay raise and 6% rent increase, so I'm making less than last year. I'm not sure if I have enough money for gas to make it from my winter to summer parks. If I didn't have parrents who were in a position to help me with my student loans in February I would have lost my vehicle.
"Pulling yourself up by the bootstaps" doesn't work when you can't afford boots working 40+ hours a week with a ban on overtime.
My studio apartment in my park is $150 more a month than my student loans. A one-bedroom in our gateway town starts at $1750. I feel like my life is falling apart.
I was a NPS trail worker. Not sure what job "ranger" would refer to as the only "ranger" I knew of were LEO's. There is some backcountry rangers but they are titled as such.
I am not sure a sceince based position in the parks qualifies you as a "ranger"
I am also no sure about the comment regarding pay raise and the cost of rent. Most NPS are seasonal and they have rent controlled rooms below market rate. At least that used to be the case. Rent was cheap as a seasonal. cost of living was high though, and I and others moved thousands of miles to take jobs. Often for years on end.
The problem with rent as a permanant, or temp is that the cost of living OUTSIDE of these parks has changed dramatically. Two generations behind me in the same job was enough to buy yourself a house in El Portal. Nowadays a permanant trail worker would struggle to even afford Hawthorne NV as a homeowner.
And that problem has nothing to do with the parks.
Also- most people just lie on USAJOBS.GOV. It is what it is. Though I refrained from it myself, and I lost jobs as a result would be my guess
I would say Nepotism is required for a career in the parks. Though thats another form of priviledge, but not one involving economic status per say or race background.
Never let the Service become just another....
The wokeness has finally won I guess.