Report: Education graduates to enter growing job market

Two weeks before commencement, graduates from the College of Education and Human Services can breathe a sigh of relief that they will be entering the one job field still hiring during the economic recession.

Roughly 30,000 education and health care jobs have been created in 2009 while all other professions continue to shed workers, according to the U.S. Department of Labor. Another 3.2 million teaching jobs could be available to education graduates within the next four years as educators in their mid-50s retire, according to a report from the National Commission on Teaching and America’s Future.

“Teaching is a good field,” said Beverly Robbins, a career services specialist. “People are always going to go to school.”

A report released from the Illinois Department of Education in February found the state’s public school systems didn’t have enough jobs available to hire the thousands of new teachers Illinois is producing.

But Jan Waggoner, director of teacher education, said expanding urban communities such as Orlando, Memphis or Las Vegas — communities where schools are consistently being constructed to keep up with increasing populations — are in dire need of new teachers.

Robbins said she does not believe the number of retiring teachers would be as high as the report conveys. More teachers near retirement age have decided to continue working because their retirement funds tanked during the recession, she said.

Despite the increased demand for teachers, a student graduating with a degree in education needs to be flexible, Waggoner said.

“If a student wants to graduate and go back to that home school where they know the job is just waiting for them, the chances are more difficult than if they are more flexible to move,” she said.

In Illinois, last year’s class of SIUC education graduates had more luck finding a job in the southern half of the state, according to the Teacher Database Warehouse.

Teachers certified in special education, math, science and agriculture are the most sought, but so too are school administrators, Waggoner said.

Sean Hannon, a senior from Lombard studying physical education, said he wants to become a teacher because of his high school wrestling coach, who got him motivated to take an interest in life after school.

“He taught me to take pride in my work,” Hannon said. “I’d like to do that for someone else.”

But the idea of being an administrator has been on Hannon’s mind lately, he said.

“I’m really not happy with a lot of the administration at schools,” he said. “I think they get too far away from remembering they’re a teacher at heart.”