New federal data highlight a leaky pipeline for would-be teachers in college.
The Baccalaureate and Beyond study tracks about 29,000 U.S. students who earned a bachelor’s degree in 2015-16. A year later, nearly 4 out of 5 of those graduates had started a job, and fewer than half were in full-time salaried positions. More than 41 percent of the new graduates in the study reported that they had at least considered teaching as a career in college, but less than 17 percent actually ended up in the classroom a year later.
Business, health-care, or science, technology, education, and math majors produced the smallest shares of graduates who went into teaching careers.