According to the UNESCO Institute of Statistics, the world will need over 69 million new teachers by 2030. So, if you’re looking to enter the field of education, your choice is justified. However, it’ll be more helpful to gain a degree education route to ensure you gain all the vital skills.
Obtaining an education master’s degree is one of the best ways to advance your career and respond to future challenges. The education degrees offered by universities are so varied that they’re suitable for all kinds of educators, whether a high school teacher or a university lecturer. From engineering to neuroscience, there’s nothing you can’t study for your advanced degree in education.
The best part is that a degree in education is also useful for various professions, which means if you want to transition from a teacher to a more corporate field (e.g., a learning and development officer for a bank), your education background will always come in handy.
If you’re curious about how an education degree can help your career, this article provides you with seven interesting ways. Keep reading.
1. It helps transition into administrative work
The easiest way for an educator to transition into school administration is to acquire an education degree. A master’s in education equips you with the necessary leadership and administrative skills needed for administrative positions.
These skills, merged with your real classroom experience and interpersonal relationship skills with students and parents, make you an eligible candidate at every educational level. Whether it’s an on-campus or online master’s program, you’re given the requisite knowledge and necessary credentials needed to tackle any demands of an administrative position in the education sector.
2. It helps you master the science of teaching
The key to career development starts with your personal development. No matter their years of experience, every educator always has to consciously invest in their career development if they want to be more within the education sector.
When you register for an MA education degree, you get to improve your skills as an educator and keep up with the changing times. For the duration of this degree, you’ll be provided with newly enhanced skills that allow you to engage with your students on a higher and improved level for optimum output.
An educator who intentionally masters the science of teaching and constantly seeks to improve their expertise becomes a person whom students love to engage with regularly because they know they’re going to perform better.
3. It allows you to develop your career specialty
We all have specific areas of interest, no matter the profession we pursue. In the education sector, you can branch into different specialties with the help of a master’s degree. The master’s degree gives you the authority in your chosen speciality and field, which in turn enables you to develop the requisite teaching abilities to fulfill your purpose in your chosen area of interest.
You might be interested in education for a specific age group, administrative work related to education, or merging two different education niches. No matter your preferences, there are many graduate degree programs with unique specialization offers you can apply for.
The best part about developing a specialty is that you get to embed your passions in your profession, which makes your job a breath of fresh air. You love what you do and how it impacts people; that’s the best career advancement you can ever experience.
4. It offers flexibility
Many teachers and educators end up leaving the profession because they’re not aware of the various professional opportunities outside of the classroom. The science of teaching is never limited to the classroom walls, and with a master’s degree in education, you’ll discover that.
The education field is highly extensive, but certain sectors can only be accessed with advanced degrees and further education. A master’s degree in education offers flexibility and equips you with the requisite skills to transition from being a classroom teacher to entering the corporate rifle for a non-profit education sector. These areas always require the training and development of skilled personnel, and who is better than you, a fellow professional?
5. You can maximize your income
The more advanced your degree, the higher you are likely to earn, no matter your chosen profession. It’s not a rule of thumb, but it might as well be. Research shows that a teacher with a master’s degree in education often earns twice as much as a bachelor’s degree annually.
In some cases, recruiters automatically increase your wages when you attain a master’s degree in education from certain academic institutions. With this in mind, what’s stopping you from going for that degree?
One might argue that finding time to walk into a campus-based classroom is stressful, with countless students to teach and a home to take care of. Studying isn’t that hard in this era, though, thanks to virtual options made available by different educational institutions. You can always opt for an online degree program, which offers you great flexibility, allowing you to work and study simultaneously with ease.
6. You can move into learning and development
Besides the non-profit sector, a master’s degree in education also perfectly sets you up for a corporate world role. One example is learning and development. As a part of the HR process, learning and development officers identify staff training and development needs. They also build training programs for organizations to ensure staff members have the essential knowledge to carry out their duties with ease.
Learning and development officers are usually versed in leadership skills and have real classroom experience. They also have a deeper understanding of the organization’s key HR initiatives and know how best to engage employees. A master’s degree teaches how you develop and hone these essential skills with ease, making you a more eligible candidate as soon as you graduate.
7. It aids with career transitions
As mentioned earlier, education is always evolving. The constant change demands that educators and teachers stay on top of trending methodologies and teaching updates to remain relevant. With a master’s degree in education, achieving this is not a difficult feat.
The best thing about a master’s degree in education is that it isn’t just suited for educators and teachers. Thanks to the evolution of education, these advanced degrees can now be pursued by professionals from varying fields looking to educate their professions and organizations. Nowadays, various education master’s degrees focus on specific branches of professional education such as science, engineering, and technology.
Everyone can consider a master’s degree in education. It’s a great field that attracts countless people from varying backgrounds like teaching, medicine, and psychology. The content offered within these master’s degree programs is in-depth. They promise to give you a deeper understanding of education and how best innovation can be used to make education more challenging and exciting.