What do you plan to do after your degree?

[cursoryevent]

I recently got a very good offer from a PhD in Education program and am seriously considering it as my best option.  It is a career change, focusing on quantitative research methods.  I am passionate about this track, but not familiar with the lay of the land in Ed departments. 

Really, what I am curious about is what your focuses are in education and what kinds of non-professor jobs y'all are looking forward to?

[graciasadios]

My end goal is to be an elementary school principal. I'm applying to ed. admin. master's programs that come with state certification to be a principal. After getting the master's degree, I'll most likely continue on and get an Ed.D. or Ph.D. in education. I think it could make sense for someone like yourself to get the doctoral degree and then go get the state-certification to be school principal. Although, this definitely isn't for every Ph.D. in education since quantitative research is a very different skill set than school leadership.

[jortin10]

7 hours ago, cursoryevent said:

I recently got a very good offer from a PhD in Education program and am seriously considering it as my best option.  It is a career change, focusing on quantitative research methods.  I am passionate about this track, but not familiar with the lay of the land in Ed departments. 

Really, what I am curious about is what your focuses are in education and what kinds of non-professor jobs y'all are looking forward to?

I am interested in the quantitative methods field as well. I am looking at programs that have it as a stand alone major, ie. not with Psychology. What schools are you considering? After graduation, I want to be employed as a researcher analyst for the USDOE or a higher education nonprofit org.

[cursoryevent]

On 1/17/2016 at 0:01 AM, jortin10 said:

I am interested in the quantitative methods field as well. I am looking at programs that have it as a stand alone major, ie. not with Psychology. What schools are you considering? After graduation, I want to be employed as a researcher analyst for the USDOE or a higher education nonprofit org.

Oh cool, PM me sometime.  I don't like to disclose identifiable information here. 

 

On 1/16/2016 at 4:38 PM, graciasadios said:

My end goal is to be an elementary school principal. I'm applying to ed. admin. master's programs that come with state certification to be a principal. After getting the master's degree, I'll most likely continue on and get an Ed.D. or Ph.D. in education. I think it could make sense for someone like yourself to get the doctoral degree and then go get the state-certification to be school principal. Although, this definitely isn't for every Ph.D. in education since quantitative research is a very different skill set than school leadership.

Yes, although I have teaching experience in public and private school settings, it is not as deep as someone who has served as faculty or something similar that I anticipate many PhD students I meet will have experienced.  I am more of a quant methods person than anything.  So far, I see myself just applying quant methods in some sort of industry setting so I was looking for more education-related applications.

[aebh615]

I'm hoping to include some kind of specialization or concentration in quantitative methods, I think all of the programs I applied to offered something like that. I'm interested in program development and evaluation in schools, specifically for classroom-based psych interventions. 

[t_ruth]

There are lots of great industry jobs for Ed PhDs--in this way we are pretty lucky. Most of the PhDs from my program are happily working in industry and making a pretty good living doing something they enjoy.

[graciasadios]

2 hours ago, t_ruth said:

There are lots of great industry jobs for Ed PhDs--in this way we are pretty lucky.

This statement intrigues me. What are some of the options for Ed PhDs? What about those options makes us lucky?

Edited January 25, 2016 by graciasadios

[t_ruth]

3 hours ago, graciasadios said:

This statement intrigues me. What are some of the options for Ed PhDs? What about those options makes us lucky?

I have lots of friends with Humanities PhDs who really don't see any other option outside of academia (thus, less lucky than us). There are a number of ed think-tanks, research firms, policy groups, etc. that we can work for. There are also educational content developers (traditional and digital), school districts, and many other organizations that can make use of the skills and expertise of Ed PhDs.

[ZeChocMoose]

13 hours ago, graciasadios said:

This statement intrigues me. What are some of the options for Ed PhDs? What about those options makes us lucky?

Education is one of those fields where the PhD can translate into industry jobs and academic jobs fairly easily.  This is super unusual compared to more traditional fields especially humanities as t_ruth mentions in hu post. In my subfield of higher ed, more PhD recipients get industry jobs as they are more plentiful and the pay tends to be better.  Usually, people will work in higher ed administration, education policy research groups, state systems of higher ed, education non-profits, federal or state departments of ed, educ lobbying agencies, educ consulting, educ membership organizations for specific types of institutions, education test agencies, etc.  Honestly, the list goes on and on.