Re:California teacher pension debt overwhelms school budgets
by analog31 on Thursday August 09, 2018 @02:11PM
(#17726811)
Indeed, but the requirement for a teaching degree is actively defended by the union, and is on a tenuous footing. It's not required for private K-12 schools, where pay and benefits are in fact drastically lower. The government of my state (Wisconsin) has moved to relax teacher licensing requirements for public schools.
When I was an adjunct, I had no interest in getting onto the tenure track, or in teaching as a career. I was simply new in town and needed a job.
There is a glut of adjunct candidates with a PhD and a postdoc who can't get TT but there are relatively few with teaching degrees. The oversupply of adjuncts happens because they are the unsuccessful seekers of a much better job -- tenured professor -- but there is no similar situation for teachers. The economic analogy therefore won't fit, because the supply of teachers will respond to price signals more than the supply of adjuncts.