Teaching: A Profession in Decline?

In less than a decade, enrollment in primary and secondary education programs at American colleges and universities has plunged by 42 percent, while those filling the spots are increasingly identified as bottom-tier graduates. The impact on the future of public education could be devastating.

There are a lot of reasons which could help to explain the sudden drop, as well as the flight of upper-echelon students away from the field. Teacher pay has long been identified as a factor prohibitive to attracting the best talent to the profession, but despite shrinking state and local budgets having kept public sector salaries stagnant in the recent past, that argument probably isn’t as strong as it once was.

In Florida, the median first-year income for any college graduate with a bachelor’s degree is only $26,500. In Manatee County, first year teachers with a bachelor’s degree start off at around $39,000–and that’s for 10 months, rather than 12–making the profession one of the better paying ones at the onset. In fact, when annualized, it’s actually slightly better than the average first-year salary of a Florida attorney.

Teacher pay in Manatee tops out at $65,000 per 10 months, while a 12-month move to administration can mean significantly more, with high school principals earning over $110,000 annually, which is considerably higher than the average compensation for an experienced attorney in Manatee, which is only around $84,000. That might not put you on the Forbes list, but in a county where the median household income is under $40k, it’s also nothing to sneeze at.

Teachers have long argued that additional responsibilities like grading papers, holding parent conferences and attending after school events made for much more demand on time than most jobs, but technology-driven changes along with increased competition in the modern workplace have left few professions in which longer hours and outside the workday emails, texts and video conferencing aren’t equally or more intensive. While the benefits for teachers have indeed shrunk in recent years, they’ve definitely held up better than the private sector and things like comparatively-inexpensive health care, defined-benefit pensions at retirement, along with federal holidays and summers off should be enough to draw more talented high school students to the field.

Let me emphasize that my intent is not to argue that teachers have it easy or are overpaid, but to challenge the reflexive notion that pay is the primary driver that is suppressing interest. In a hyper-competitive American workforce ravaged by automation and outsourcing, I’d argue that the upsides I’ve listed should be making education a more popular major, not the other way around. So, what's to blame for the decline? Several factors, most likely.

First, it bears noting that perhaps the biggest blow to the profession over the long term has been the ancillary effect of other professions becoming less male dominated. For a very long time, the most common field that a female high school valedictorian would enter was teaching. Gender-based discrimination and the boys clubs that resulted everywhere from law firms to board rooms to surgical centers and engineering labs had the effect of creating an intellectually-inflated teaching field dominated by high-performing female students who chose a career there largely because of the lack of equal opportunity elsewhere. As the tail end of teachers who were so directed into the field retired over the last two decades, it had a noticeable impact.

More recently, however, the shift toward a stubborn reliance on standardized tests that are increasingly attached to every performance metric a teacher is judged by has certainly dampened enthusiasm, while having the additional negative consequence of dis-incentivizing the best teachers from going where they are needed most. When everything from keeping your job to getting a raise or promotion largely hinges on factors you have very limited influence over (parental involvement, English proficiency, learning disabilities, poverty, etc.), it can give second thoughts to career decisions while also tempering the appetite to try to make a difference among challenged populations in troubled districts.

Pinellas County has had well-documented struggles in attracting and retaining quality teachers and has responded with some of the most generous recruitment packages in the field. It’s an occupation with tremendous demand both there and in neighboring Hillsborough County, where compensation and incentives also reflect that dynamic. Yet, the University of South Florida, a top producer of new teachers in those counties, has seen enrollment in teaching programs drop by 40 percent over the past seven years.

Another factor to consider is the dismal outlook for the teaching profession in the foreseeable future. With many states, including Florida, making a strong push to shift public funding toward charters (where pay and benefits are usually less than public schools), there is little reason for an 18 year-old to see much changing for the better over the course of their career, should they choose teaching. There’s also the push for increasing and expanding the use of vouchers, which creates similar concerns.