As graduation approaches, many students from the Teacher Education Program at UCLA may find themselves jobless after June.
Last year, about half of the departing students from the program were able to find employment. This year, the numbers are expected to remain the same or become worse.
However, while the number of teaching positions nationwide has gone down, the applications for TEP has gone up.
Across the nation, teaching, which was often seen as a recession-proof profession, has had drastic reductions in employment opportunities. According to the New York Times, an expected 150,000 teachers could lose their jobs next year.
“Any time you lose teachers, the quality of education for students suffers,” said Tyrone Howard, associate professor and faculty director of Center X at UCLA, a program that trains teachers, principals and other leaders in education.
New teachers are especially affected by this decline in available teaching positions because districts prefer to hire candidates who already have teaching experience in other states or districts. Newer teachers are usually first to go when layoffs begin.
Unfortunately, these newer, younger teachers, who are sometimes the most eager and enthusiastic, become discouraged after being laid off, said Howard.
“The sad part is that a lot of people who would really make a big difference will choose now not to teach,” Howard added.
Students from the program who want to teach at the elementary level had a particularly hard time last year, with only 40 percent of them acquiring jobs after graduation. English and social studies teachers had a similarly difficult experience, with only about half finding employment. The least affected were teachers of math, science and special education, for whom there is a high demand in the state of California.
In previous years, all of the students from the teaching program had found jobs by the time of graduation, but this success stopped last year and has not recovered this year.
“This is probably one of our worst times in teacher hiring,” said Jody Priselac, executive director of Center X and a faculty member for the TEP.
With a shrinking job market, many graduating students have opted to teach at charter schools, which do not have the same stipulations as public districts do, because they are not concerned with adhering to regulations and standards but rather with producing academic results.
Still others have been sent by TEP to work at after-school tutoring and community outreach programs like the YMCA and the Boys and Girls Club in an effort to keep them connected to students in the classroom.
Although the center recognizes the tough times passing over the teaching profession at the moment, it plans to keep preparing students to become teachers and for the tough job market in the future.
“You can’t not prepare people to become teachers because in a couple of years things could change and these jobs will be important,” Priselac said.