High school teaching + M.Ed. Before PhD

[mathmollusk]

Is it a bad idea to get a masters in math education and teach for a few years before doing a pure math PhD?

I'm looking ultimately to teach at a university. However, I know that the job market right now is trash.

So I intend to get some high school teaching experience and the M.Ed. first, and have that to fall back on after the PhD.

Is this a good idea or something that would only really work "in theory"? Would the M.Ed. be a black mark on my transcript for Ph.D. admissions?

Edited September 5, 2020 by insupliquitous

[Stat Assistant Professor]

There are plenty of pure math PhD's who began their careers as high school teachers. Shouldn't be a problem. The main issue is if you will be able to score decently enough on the math subject GRE, which takes a decent amount of preparation (especially if you have been out of school for awhile) -- you really need to master subjects like abstract algebra, real analysis, linear algebra, etc. to do well on this test. You also need strong letters of recommendation, in addition to good grades in upper division math courses. I doubt the M.Ed. would be a "black mark" on your transcript -- most likely, it would be viewed as a slight positive, or at worst, viewed neutrally. The main things you need to convey in your application are mathematical maturity and research potential.

That said, the academic job market for math PhDs has been incredibly tight for many years and is likely to be more so now because of covid. Even before covid, doing 4+ years of postdocs was the norm. There are math PhDs from Harvard, Stanford, Princeton, MIT, etc. who have had to do multiple postdocs before taking a job at Montana State or Kansas State. I'm not saying that these are bad schools, just that it underlies that if you want to stay in academic mathematics, you *really* need to be in it for the long-haul as well as geographically flexible. You can't be like, "Oh, I would never take a job in [state/geographical region]." The situation is a bit better in statistics/biostatistics, but pure and applied math are really competitive.

Edited September 5, 2020 by Stat Assistant Professor

[bayessays]

Is there another reason you don't want to pursue the PhD now?  If your first choice career is to teach in college, it would be pretty easy to fall back on high school teaching, so it might make more sense to do the PhD first, considering the MEd will cost you a good chunk of money and may not be necessary.

[Stat Assistant Professor]

4 minutes ago, bayessays said:

Is there another reason you don't want to pursue the PhD now?  If your first choice career is to teach in college, it would be pretty easy to fall back on high school teaching, so it might make more sense to do the PhD first, considering the MEd will cost you a good chunk of money and may not be necessary.

Good point as well. There are a lot of PhDs in various disciplines who end up going into high school teaching, especially at private schools where the money is comparable to (or even more than) the salary of a math prof at a directional state school. Also, the payscale is higher for teacher who have higher levels of education.

[mathmollusk]

Thanks for the responses. 

40 minutes ago, bayessays said:

Is there another reason you don't want to pursue the PhD now?  If your first choice career is to teach in college, it would be pretty easy to fall back on high school teaching, so it might make more sense to do the PhD first, considering the MEd will cost you a good chunk of money and may not be necessary.

It's a good point. My main thing is that, given it's so competitive, I'm not completely sure I want to do the PhD yet. The Master's I'm looking at is actually a MST which includes 5 graduate-level math courses, which I'm thinking could help me decide/improve a possible PhD application. It's also at the same university I just finished up my undergrad at so it should theoretically help me bolster my rec letters from the graduate courses. 

It's good to know that if I do end up doing it, it won't be a black mark and I could always go back to teaching after the PhD.