New study forecasts dramatic shortage of special education PhDs

Sept. 23, 2011 - PRLog -- CLAREMONT, Calif.  — A new study led by professors from Claremont Graduate University's School of Educational Studies warns that the United States is on track for a dramatic shortage of qualified PhDs in the special education field in the next five years and beyond. The projected shortage will result in thousands of students with disabilities being underserved.

The Special Education Faculty Needs Assessment (SEFNA) was developed under a grant from the U.S. Dept. of Education’s Office of Special Education Programs to Claremont Graduate University. The four-year study was launched to determine whether the nation's special education enterprise had the necessary infrastructure to produce the workforce needed to meet the education needs of students with disabilities and their families.

While job shortages have been reported for PhDs in many other arenas, the field of special education has faced a persistent shortage of college and university faculty for decades. Too few doctoral graduates are produced while the demand for new faculty remains high.

According to the SEFNA report, this will be exacerbated over the next five years, when doctoral granting universities - those producing the teacher educators who will produce the next generation of teachers - will lose 1/2 to 2/3 of their faculty to retirement alone and all special education teacher preparation programs will experience a 21% turnover rate annually.  Also, job searches for new faculty is robust.

To meet the expected demand, universities that educate special education PhDs would need to more than triple the number of graduates now produced annually.

"We were surprised by many of our findings," said Deborah Deutsch Smith, professor in CGU's School of Educational Studies and the lead researcher on the project. "We hope this study will inform the nation's policymakers and the special education community of actions that need to be taken to avoid an impending faculty shortage of overwhelming magnitude."

To overcome this challenge, the Department of Education and institutions of higher education must dramatically increase their efforts to identify, financially support, and accelerate the time it takes for special education PhD candidates to graduate, according to the SEFNA findings.  A one-year increase in time between enrollment and completion of the degree decreases the odds of becoming a faculty member by 2.3 times, according to the report.

Sue Robb, also a professor in CGU's School of Educational Studies, partnered with Smith on the research. CGU’s Chris Young, a Pitzer College graduate assisted with the research effort, as did Naomi Tyler from Vanderbilt. Bianca Montrosse, a CGU graduate and professor at Western Carolina University served as research analyst.

The report comes 10 years after Smith first raised the alarm about the growing shortage of special education faculty. Her 2001 Faculty Shortage report was the first project funded to study the multidimensional nature of the problem

"After a decade, the time was right to build upon that research," she said. "This problem will not go away by itself.”

The report is available for download at http://www.cgu.edu/pages/4546.asp?item=5494

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Founded in 1925, Claremont Graduate University is one of the top graduate schools in the United States. Our nine academic schools conduct leading-edge research and award masters and doctoral degrees in 24 disciplines.