Stanford students who graduated last year from the Graduate School of Education (GSE) report high success rates in finding full-time jobs soon after graduation.
Stanford EdCareers, the career services and professional learning hub for Stanford GSE, has been reporting career placement data for PhD and MA graduates beginning with the Class of 2011; this is the first year that the report includes information for GSE undergraduates who completed the minor or honors in education.
Of the 210 PhD and MA graduate students (98 percent of whom reported their employment status), 82 percent reported working in jobs related to education and 86 percent received and accepted a job offer within four months of graduation.
PhD graduate Rebekah LeMahieu began her job search during her second year at the GSE. “I started taking advantage of the career explorations opportunities offered around campus, such as programming offered through VPGE [Office of the Vice Provost for Graduate Education], Stanford EdCareers and BEAM [Bridging Education, Ambition & Meaningful Work].”
Stanford EdCareers works closely with partners across campus and in the education industry to enhance students’ career trajectories.
“We make an effort to have all group and individual programming support our coaching model to provide valuable career exploration,” said Jennifer Mason, associate director. “We could not do this critical work without our many close campus and industry partners.”
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Twenty-eight students completed PhDs during the 2017-18 academic year. Employment placements were known for all but one of them: 95 percent had full-time jobs, 81 percent worked in their desired geographic locations, and 84 percent were working in academic or research positions.
In 2018, the GSE awarded master’s degrees to 96 graduates from eight different non-teacher credentialing programs, and 86 graduates of the Stanford Teacher Education Program (STEP).
Master's graduates reported success in job placement in a broad range of employment types. The GSE academic programs include: Policy, Organization and Leadership Studies; Learning, Design and Technology; and International Comparative Education/International Education Policy Analysis. Almost a third obtained joint degrees in Education and Business Administration, Public Policy or Law.
A total of 98 percent of the STEP graduates, who train specifically to teach at the elementary, middle and high school levels, were employed. All of them reported receiving a job offer within four months of graduation and half had received two or more offers. Eighty-five percent of the respondents accepted teaching jobs at public, non-charter schools.
The GSE honors and minor students’ career experience reflects that of graduates who earned PhD and master of arts degrees in 2018. The GSE is the only professional graduate school at Stanford to offer two academic programs specifically for undergraduates: a minor and a research-based honors program. EdCareers was able to determine employment status for 70 percent of those students. Of those, 22 percent were continuing their educations. Of the remainder, 94 percent found jobs within four months of graduation, almost all in full-time positions. Their new jobs ranged from A to Z (Apple to Zeta Charter Schools.)
STEP graduate Emery Donovan reflected on her job teaching first grade and her knowledge of new theories of teaching and learning: “I feel enormously lucky to have a sense of the latest research in education and to get to use that to inform my decisions as a teacher.”
Nina Slote earned her master’s degree in the Learning, Design and Technology Program. She said, “Faculty members at the GSE, GSB and d.school were all extremely helpful in chatting with me about my career aspirations and connecting me with people for informational interviews. I found out about the company I now work for … through a professor.”
Joao Paulo Cossi Fernandes put his master’s degree in International Comparative Education to work in his native country of Brazil, where he created an educational organization and will work for the Inter-American Development Bank. He emphasized the importance of maintaining good relations with former colleagues while making new connections in the process of getting his degree at Stanford.
Stanford GSE graduates found work around the country and around the globe. While 91 percent of STEP graduates took teaching jobs in California (which was overwhelmingly their location of choice), non-STEP grads spread out from Hawaii to Rhode Island and took positions in a dozen foreign countries, including Singapore, Rwanda, Brazil and Turkey.
The full report is available at http://edimpact.stanford.edu.
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