Multimedia Reporting (Fred-Musser)

Elementary and secondary schools face a well-documented teacher shortage, and now, KU research suggests universities are struggling to find professors to train those future teachers.

The mid-range salary and research expectations of being a professor at a research university can make these teacher education jobs unattractive, and candidates who apply often lack key qualifications.

Lisa Wolf-Wendel, professor of educational leadership and policy studies in the School of Education, worked on the research. She said that the school had trouble filling faculty positions for teacher education, and she said other universities around the country had similar problems.

“There’s not enough people,” Wolf-Wendel said, “and we think that if we look in a crystal ball and look to the future, there’s going to be more need.”

Participants surveyed as part of the research described the teacher education job market as “very tight,” “abysmal” and “in grave trouble.”

Marc Mahlios, chair of the education school’s curriculum and teaching department, said the school has struggled to hire for math and science education positions in the past. He said the school eventually abandoned efforts to fill one science position.

“The number of people applying is clearly down,” Mahlios said.

Wolf-Wendel said the two big qualifications for teacher educators at research universities are teaching experience and research ability.

“What search committees want is people who are sort of double threats,” Wolf-Wendel said. “They want someone who’s been a teacher, who has K-12 public school experience, and they want someone who’s a really good researcher.”

Susan Twombly, professor of educational leadership and policy studies who worked on the research with Wolf-Wendel, said research universities like KU rarely hire faculty who earned doctorates at universities where faculty research is emphasized less, like Emporia State University or Pittsburg State University.

This creates problems, she said, because more people are getting doctorates at these schools.

“The expectations would be a little bit different at a place like Emporia,” Twombly said. “Places like this are more difficult, because people who go into teacher education want to be teachers. They aren’t necessarily researchers. It’s not what they love doing.”

The shortage of good teacher education candidates also affects universities without a research emphasis, though.

Tes Mehring, dean of the Emporia State Teachers College, said Emporia State struggles to attract good teacher education faculty candidates. Mehring said people with doctorates in education are often attracted to careers outside of teacher education.

“I think there are many more options today for people who pursue higher education degrees than maybe existed even a decade ago,” Mehring said.

Twombly and Wolf-Wendel found in their research that only about 41 percent of people with doctorates show interest in becoming teacher educators.

Rick Ginsberg, dean of the KU School of Education, said the most difficult part of persuading people to become teacher educators is that teachers are often hesitant to leave the K-12 school environment and go to universities.

“It takes a special kind of person,” Ginsberg said. “You’re asking people to get out of what it is that they love, and that’s teaching kids.”

Research universities value teaching experience in teacher educators, Wolf-Wendel said, but the most experienced teachers may be the most difficult to pull away from the world of K-12 schools.

“The older people, the people with the most experience, are not going to be in a financial position or in a position in their lives where they can just drop everything, go to the best school and quit their job,” Wolf-Wendel said.

And even for people who already have doctorates, a teacher education job may not make economic sense.

Mahlios said many people who would be qualified for faculty positions can make more in K-12 schools than the $50,000 beginning salary the education school might offer an assistant professor.

“I have a former student of mine who teaches in the area whose nine-month salary is more than that $50,000,” Mahlios said. “For her to come into the University would mean a pay cut.”

Less pay, combined with the pressures of conducting research and achieving tenure, make a professorship sound unattractive compared with other jobs in education, Mahlios said.

Lizette Peter, KU assistant professor of curriculum and instruction who was hired in fall 2005, said the high-pressure push to attain tenure at a research university makes her job stressful.

“There are a lot of smart people up here on this hill, and getting tenure means proving that you belong among them,” Peter said. “So, the years as an assistant professor are filled with with anxiety, self-doubt and pressure, at least for the junior faculty members that I know.”

The availability of grant money and research opportunities can also affect interest in teacher education positions from year to year, Mike Neal, assistant dean of the education school, said.

“If research money is strong in education, then people do not mind carrying the triple load of research, teaching and service,” Neal said. “But if they’re going to spend all their time writing grant after grant after grant and no money comes in, then they’re very discouraged going into higher education or teacher education.”

Neal said that when the federal government funded more educational research, interest in educational faculty positions increased.

Universities cannot control the help they receive from the government, but Twombly said they may need to make some adjustments of their own to compensate for the lack of qualified teacher educators.

Twombly said economic principles suggest universities need to either lower expectations for teacher educators or raise salaries.

“We have to not only raise wages for people going into the profession; we have to think about how we can get more people to want to get Ph.D.’s,” Twombly said.

She said universities did not tend to adjust requirements for faculty members. However, she said that after the education school failed to fill an English education position last year, the school broadened the requirements this year and had more applicants.

Ginsberg said that if the education school cannot fill a given faculty position, the school will often hire a non-tenure-track instructor who has no research requirements. The school did this with its English education position that was not filled last year.

Neal, a former superintendent and principal, called his new career at the University his “hobby.” He said he came into academia after he had achieved financial security because he wanted to contribute more to education.

He said many other principals and superintendents would be willing to begin academic careers as he did. He said this could be a new direction for universities to look for teacher education candidates.

“I think there are plenty of superintendents and principals out there in their 50s, who could afford to come to the University, who will have 15 solid years, who are hard workers, bright people, who have a strong work ethic, who know schools inside and out,” Neal said.

Peter said a career in academia can be fulfilling. She said being a professor provides a freedom beyond that of most other professions.

“The biggest advantage to working in academia is that you are, to some extent, in control of your schedule and the kind of work you do,” Peter said.

Mahlios said that the shortage of teacher education candidates is not yet an emergency and that the field of teacher education will continue no matter what happens. He said that, while the quality of teacher education faculty may not remain as high as it is now, universities would still fill positions.

And, he said, the shortage facing education schools is not as serious as the problems public elementary and secondary schools have.

“I think the shortage is greater in the K-12 arena than it is in higher ed,” Mahlios said. “But clearly, they’re related.”