Shop Talk: Utah’s Natural-History Museum Blends Into Its Site

Nobody else can answer the question as to whether it’s worth it. It depends on your priorities, and differences in degree that are hard enough for you to answer, much less your readers. How much less is the pay? How much more collegial is it? If your other option is phenomenal pay and atrocious interpersonal warfare, I’d take the worthy colleagues. The only real downside to caring deeply about your colleagues is watching them suffer at the hands of cruel dictators (I speak from experience). Realistically, you’re probably not faced with that. Assuming its not worse across the board, your other option seems likely to be mundane office politics for moderately better pay.  You just have to make tradeoffs. Is the pay at the collegial institution so low that it would be hard to live on? Is the better paying job conflict ridden, or just more independent than collaborative? In negotiations classes, we encourage students to create a scoring system for their priorities, to help make sense of the tradeoffs when there are many issues in play. It can help you make sense of the tradeoffs between pay, collegiality, teaching load, research support, location, etc., and it can help you think about what the school might be looking for, so you can find an agreement that you are both comfortable with (if they can’t pay you more, maybe they can give you a lighter teaching load for a couple of years). Congratulations on your success in a difficult job market, and leave the stress for those who are still looking.