What tell us that paga parous is a
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When it comes to choosing a career, you don't have to decide between meaning and money. For example, surgeons earn over $300,000 a year and 96 percent of them say their job makes the world a better place. For many occupations, however, there is a significant disparity between pay and meaning. And because of that disparity, some jobs, like teachers, end up having to leave the profession they felt so driven to go into.
PayScale's recent report, The Most and Least Meaningful Jobs, shows that teachers at all levels report consistently high levels of job meaning. But they also report consistently low rates of pay. Ninety-six percent of postsecondary English language and literature teachers reported high job meaning. That's second only to the clergy for high job meaning. Their earnings also hover around clergy level: $43,600 median pay for postsecondary English teachers, and $46,600 for clergy.
Other teachers report similarly high meaning and low pay. More than 80 percent of Kindergarten teachers, middle school teachers and secondary school teachers say their job makes the world a better place, but all earn less than $45,000 per year.
That’s not exactly poverty-level earnings. The median household income in the United States is $53,046, according to the Census Bureau; a family whose earning members included two secondary school teachers would potentially make $64,200. It's not petroleum engineer money, but it's not peanuts, either. So why do we characterize teachers as low paid workers, especially if their careers offer so many intangible benefits like a consistently strong feeling that teaching makes the world a better place?
Pay vs. Investment
It takes a lot of education to become a teacher, and education, in the U.S., has never been a more expensive investment. Requirements vary by state, but teachers are typically required to complete a bachelor's degree and a teacher preparation program, which sometimes requires a master's degree. And generally, before anybody is allowed to get in front of a classroom, they have to get a state-approved teaching certification, which usually requires spending time as an unpaid student teacher. At minimum, teachers have to complete four years of postsecondary education; in many areas, a master's degree is either an official or informal requirement.
Most teachers are looking at five or six years of preparation for their profession, in an era when the cost of college is rising faster than wages. Tuition and fees for full-time students at four-year schools averaged $14,300 in 2013-14, according to the National Center for Education Statistics – a 45 percent increase from 2000-1. Unsurprisingly, student loan debt has also increased, with 49 percent of first-time, full-time students receiving loans for 2012-3. The average amount of loans also increased for first-time, full-time students, by 39 percent, from $5,100 in 2001 to $7,000 in 2012.
That's a lot of money to potentially owe, if you're going to going to graduate with a master's degree that prepares you for a job that pays so little. Compare that with other jobs that pay more with a master's degree, like a database administrator (median salary for all education levels: $69,626) or a software engineer (median salary for all education levels: $77,982).
Programs to partially fund or repay loans for teachers' educations can help reduce the debt load, but most have caps, such as the Stafford Loan Forgiveness Program for Teachers, which forgives $17,500 in principal and interest; or the Teach for America program, which offers a chance to win an award worth $11,375; or the TEACH Grant Program, which offers $4,000 a year for eligible teachers who promise to teach high-need subjects in low-income schools. Funding sources like these, while helpful, won't do much to offset the cost of a degree that costs tens of thousands a year.