Aligning Degrees with Needs: Are There Too Many Education Majors?

The Digest story above details the push to keep high school graduates in-state for their university experience, with the expectation that upon graduation they will positively impact the economy of the state. An essential part of keeping an educated workforce local, however, is the ability for individuals to find gainful employment upon graduation. In certain fields, where local demand is low and the supply is high, individuals often choose to move elsewhere or change careers – often an exhaustive process to the job seeker and a loss of investment for whoever paid for tuition, especially for a state that supports public education.

 

Most of the reports calling for national innovation strategies include recommendations of increasing the number of college graduates and the need to increase STEM education opportunities, but few have focused on the imbalance arising regionally in some college degree programs.

 

A few articles appeared in the press last week lamenting this problem, specifically for recent graduates of education degree programs. For example, a story in The Detroit News titled “75 percent of ed grads can’t get jobs here” states that top teacher-producing states, such as New York, Pennsylvania, Ohio, Illinois and Michigan, graduate thousands of more teachers than those states need, with graduates often relocating to states with teacher shortages such as Arizona, Florida, and the Carolinas. Cited is the state superintendent of public instruction in Michigan, Mike Flannigan, who believes “while the colleges keep producing elementary teachers, Michigan schools need teachers of special education, secondary math and science and language arts.” When graduates move to other states to pursue careers in their chosen education specialization, Michigan is not benefiting from the average public investment per student of $5,800 per year student at the state’s public universities – yet Michigan’s demand for math and science teachers remains high.

 

This problem is not just limited to the U.S., but also is arising in Canada, according to a story in the Toronto Star. “Teacher colleges face glut” cites that within the province of Ontario, the number of applicants to enter institutions that produce teachers has increased 113 percent over the last decade, with less than half to be admitted into these schools. Furthermore, according to the brief Transition to Teaching 2006, on average, only 51 percent of education graduates will find employment as full-time teachers one year after graduation. Comparatively, the employment rate increases to 64 percent for graduates qualified to teach physics, math or other technical fields.

 

In the U.S., there also exists a nationwide discrepancy between teacher certification in certain subjects and active teaching in those subjects. Data released by the National Center for Education Statistics reveal 67 percent of physics high school courses are taught by teachers who are uncertified in physics. Even though those numbers decrease to 61 percent uncertified for chemistry, 45 for the biological sciences, and 31 percent for mathematics at the high school level, these numbers may illustrate the possible demand across the nation for individuals with a mathematics or science background.

 

As these stories demonstrate, not all knowledge is created equal in a knowledge-based economy and states may be shortchanging their TBED workforce strategies by not aligning college degree programs with future employment opportunities and critical needed career paths.

 

Transition to Teaching 2006 is available at:

http://www.oct.ca/publications/professionally_speaking/december_2006/transition_01.asp

 

Qualifications of the Public School Teacher Workforce: Prevalence of Out-of-Field Teaching 1987-88 to 1999-2000 is available at: http://nces.ed.gov/pubs2002/2002603.pdf



Links to these reports and more than 4,500 additional TBED-related research reports, strategic plans and other papers also can be found at the Tech-based Economic Development (TBED) Resource Center, jointly developed by the Technology Administration and SSTI, at http://www.tbedresourcecenter.org/.