[SAEalumnus]

Ok, so here's my whole story about this.....

I wasted my first 3 years in college as a mechanical engineering major (no thanks to the guidance counselor at my high school's career center who directed me there arbitrarily without bothering to investigate my interests, but anyway) ....well, when I finally switched to physics, I assumed I was going to teach high school math and physics after graduation.

Here's the catch: our "pro-education" panzy-arse governor keeps making it more and more difficult to become a teacher and keeps cutting more and more funding from education to bail out companies that couldn't run themselves properly. Over a thousand new teachers have lost their jobs state-wide as a result of these budget cuts - there's also currently a hiring freeze from what I understand. Apparently rescuing people from their own stupidity and incompetence is more important than educating young people. So now, having a bachelors degree in a subject from an accredited university is not sufficient to prove competency in the field. Now, you either have to take a battery of tests (formerly the SSAT and Praxis, now the CSET), or take an additional 18+ semester hours of crap that you're not interested in and have no intention of ever teaching to "prove competency."

Once you've proven that you know a subject you've already earned a damn degree in, you have 15 units of prerequisites (some of which are prerequisites for each other) which require at least a year to complete, then the year of the actual credential program (another 30 units). An individual who knows from Day 1 of their freshman year that they want to teach can generally plan all this b.s. in with their undergraduate program (needing only 1 add'l year for the 30 units), but for the rest of us, it means at minimum of 2 additional years after the bachelors for a total of up to some 60+ additional semester hours (assuming you get a supplemental authorization for a second subject - something highly recommended by credential programs - all this being more than your average masters degree). Meanwhile, during these two years, you don't have any time for even a part-time job on the side, and you certainly don't get paid for student teaching (generally).

After all of this work, you finish with nothing more than a bachelors degree and a state-issued piece of paper that says you get to teach a subject in a public school. Now, you get to start at some $30-35K/yr. So all said and done, by the end of your third year after graduation, you've only cleared $30-35K before tax. On the other hand, going into industry, one can start at $30-40K/yr, and by the end of the third year in, should be making $40-45 (if not 50) K/yr. So the total opportunity cost over the first three years of going into teaching is at least:
[(30-40) + (30-40) + (40-50)] - [(30-35)] = $65-100K, if not more, plus a loss in salary of at least $10K/yr after that.

I also realized after looking at some reports and statistics from the American Institute of Physics that:

1) of all high school physics teachers, only 22% majored in Physics (earned the BS in Physics) and only 8% even so much as minored in Physics [70% therefore had no real Physics training beyond one or two courses in general education, if any at all.]; and

2) of all recipients of Bachelors in Physics, only 4% go straight into education after college, and only another 1% earn a Masters in Education (i.e. only 5% of all Physics majors end up teaching below the college level). The other 95% figured out that they can do better almost literally anywhere else.

I don't know whether or not these trends follow into other academic disciplines, but I find this kind of alarming. It's no wonder that students get such poor preparation. The teachers, generally, have little if any preparation in the field and are stretched beyond what they should be in terms of demands, dealing with students, dealing with parents, dealing with administrators, working 40+ hours per week ON campus, nevermind countless hours at home doing grades.....good grief! And the state's answer to this problem is to take money AWAY from education. Leave it to politicians who have never so much as set foot in a classroom since they finished their own meager education, nevermind taught, to make decisions regarding the budgets and standards affecting public schools (how many students' families can afford private school anyway?)....then have the audacity to whine about the declining quality of education.

I think I'll get off my soapbox now.