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Education Teachers, Postsecondary

Teach courses pertaining to education, such as counseling, curriculum, guidance, instruction, teacher education, and teaching English as a second language. Includes both teachers primarily engaged in teaching and those who do a combination of teaching and research.

Median pay
$75,350

a year

Doing it now
77,200

across the country

By 2035
Up 2.5%

5,300 openings a year

Usually needs
Doctoral or professional degree

to get in

What the work involves

  • Prepare course materials, such as syllabi, homework assignments, and handouts.
  • Prepare and deliver lectures to undergraduate or graduate students on topics such as children's literature, learning and development, and reading instruction.
  • Initiate, facilitate, and moderate classroom discussions.
  • Evaluate and grade students' class work, assignments, and papers.
  • Plan, evaluate, and revise curricula, course content, course materials, and methods of instruction.
  • Supervise students' fieldwork, internship, and research work.
  • Keep abreast of developments in the field by reading current literature, talking with colleagues, and participating in professional conferences.

What to study

The fields of study the Department of Education links to this occupation, most widely taught first.

Who it suits

O*NET scores every occupation on six interest dimensions. This one leans hardest on these three.

  • Helping and teaching

  • Analytical and curious

  • Organised and precise

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Careers like this one

Where this comes from: the description and the task list are O*NET, which the Department of Labor maintains. Pay, workforce size, outlook and the education normally needed are the Bureau of Labor Statistics Employment Projections programme, 2025 wages and 2025 to 2035 projections. Half of them earn more than $75,350 a year, which means half earn less, and what you would earn depends on where you work and how long you have been doing it. The fields of study come from the National Center for Education Statistics crosswalk.