After a long decline, high-school students’ interest in teaching as a career is growing, according to surveys completed by students taking the two college-admissions tests.
Seven percent of those who took the sat indicated that their college major would be education, compared with 6 percent last year. Among act students, 8 percent said they would study education.
Students’ interest in an education major dropped by 50 percent from 1973 to 1983, but roughly half of that loss as been recouped since then, the College Board said.
In both surveys, education was the fifth most popular area of intended college study.
Business was picked most often by students, with 23 percent of those in each survey citing it as their intended field of study.
Other popular intended majors among sat students were social sciences and history (12 percent), health services (11 percent), and engineering (10 percent).
As has been true in recent years, prospective education majors were among the weakest of college-bound students. The average combined sat score (849) of the students who planned to major in education was lower than that for any of the other five most popular majors.
On the other hand, the College Board noted, intended education majors had the highest math average (442) ever attained by that group.--mw
