Abstract
The first article in this special issue is about the doctoral programs, the suppliers of new doctoral graduates in special education. It focuses on one component of a larger effort, the Special Education Faculty Needs Assessment (SEFNA) project, which investigated many aspects of the supply of new doctoral graduates as well as the demand for new college and university faculty members. Here, the authors present information about the characteristics of the nation’s doctoral programs and their capacity to produce a sufficient supply of teacher educators, faculty for doctoral-granting universities, school leaders, federal and state officials, policy makers, researchers, and advocates. In the 10-year period since The Faculty Shortage Study (Smith, Pion, Tyler, Sindelar, & Rosenberg, 2001) was completed, substantial improvement in the capacity of doctoral programs (i.e., number and size) and the supply (i.e., number of graduates produced) occurred. Federal and stakeholder actions contributed greatly to progress made in addressing the special education faculty shortage identified in the previous study. These programs are at substantial risk of being understaffed in the upcoming years due to overwhelming attrition due to faculty retirements, which will impact the supply chain across the field of special education.
Keywords
Special education faculty shortages, equilibrium, or surpluses begin with the programs that produce doctoral graduates. Doctoral-granting universities with special education programs are the primary producers of leadership personnel who work in a variety of capacities: teacher educators, researchers, school-based leadership personnel, policy makers, federal and state officials, or advocates.
In 2001, a shortage of special education college and university faculty was identified (Smith, Pion, Tyler, Sindelar, & Rosenberg, 2001). In addition to other duties, these faculty members are the primary producers of general and special education teachers charged with the responsibility of providing an appropriate education for students with disabilities. They work at the nation’s approximately 1,100 special education teacher preparation programs, which prepare at least 90% of the nation’s teachers (Feistritzer, 2011). A shortage of special education teacher educators has a direct relationship on the shortage of effective teachers (Hardman & West, 2003), and a shortage of special education faculty has existed for decades (Benedict, Johnson, & Antia, 2011; Evans et al., 2003; Pierce, Smith, & Clarke, 1992; Sindelar, Buck, Carpenter, & Watanabe, 1993; Smith & Lovett, 1987; Smith & Pierce, 1995; Smith, Pierce, & Keyes, 1988). It is imperative that a sufficient supply of doctoral graduates be available to assume responsibilities for preparing the next generation of teachers, both general and special educators, to replenish those retiring and needed to work in expanding college and university programs (Smith et al., 2010).
In addition to teacher educators, special education doctoral programs are the main suppliers of other professionals who benefit students with disabilities and their families. In 2001, more than half of these program’s doctoral graduates assumed leadership positions in the schools as district administrators, principals, professional development providers, and program coordinators. These programs also produce the next generation of researchers who develop and validate new practices, necessary to ensure that outcomes for students with disabilities continue to improve. They also replenish other doctoral program’s faculty, so the work of supplying school districts, college and universities’ teacher education programs, and other important agencies can continue at a sufficient level.
The supply of new special education faculty members, as well as many other leaders including those who work at doctoral-granting universities, begins with special education doctoral programs. The overall supply is dependent on two important variables: (a) the number of doctoral programs and (b) the number of graduates produced. Overall supply necessary to meet all sources of demand also depends on students and their career plans. As we mentioned, a sizable proportion of new doctoral graduates do not assume careers in higher education. The Survey of Earned Doctorates found that the average number of doctoral graduates in special education for a 5-year period between 2004 and 2008 was 259, and across the same period of time, 59% of those graduates assumed positions in academe. Clearly, the size of the supply must be almost twice as large as the number of new faculty needed to fill teacher education faculty vacancies.
Information about whether the supply of new graduates meets demand for new college faculty is important and needs to be monitored. Policy makers, university officials, and potential doctoral students need to know whether the field is facing a surplus or shortage of leadership personnel. If there is an imbalance, corrective actions need to be taken. Such decision making requires the ability to make comparisons. In this regard, we are fortunate because extant research (e.g., The 2001 Faculty Shortage Study, the annual Survey of Earned Doctorates) provides information for useful guidance and comparisons.
Special Education Doctoral Programs Before The 2001 Faculty Shortage Study
Doctoral programs with an emphasis in special education predate the original passage of Public Law 94-142, formerly called the Education of All Handicapped Children’s Act and now referred to as the Individuals With Disabilities Education Act (IDEA; Schofer, 1962; Smith & Salzberg, 1994). Federal funding spurred considerable growth in the number and size of these doctoral programs. The reason that the federal government assumed a role in the preparation of doctoral-level personnel in special education was explicitly to provide the infrastructure and capacity to prepare more teachers to educate students with disabilities. Before Public Law 85-926 was passed in 1958 and funding flowed in 1959 for the support of leadership (doctoral), only 14 special education doctoral programs were operational (Smith & Salzberg, 1994). In that law, Congress specifically explained its rationale for authorizing and appropriating an agenda to prepare doctoral-level personnel in special education. It believed the nation needed more teacher educators to prepare more teachers to educate students with disabilities (Schofer, 1962). Importantly, in the 1960s, the civil rights and social justice agendas advanced by Presidents John F. Kennedy and Lyndon B. Johnson were beginning to be applied to people with disabilities. Although not mandated or guaranteed through legislation, some students with disabilities were being accepted in public schools across the nation. During this time, federal funding spurred considerable growth in the number and size of doctoral programs. By 1963, 25 doctoral programs or some 18% of all special education programs were available to produce new special education faculty (Burke, 2001), and by 1964, some 139 special education teacher preparation programs were preparing new teachers. After the passage of Public Law 84-142 in 1975 and the implementation of its guarantee to every student with a disability of a free appropriate public education, the development of teacher preparation programs outpaced that of doctoral programs. By 1987, some 65 doctoral programs were supplying almost 600 special education teacher preparation programs across the nation (Geiger, 1988). Although in 1963 doctoral programs represented some 18% of all special education preparation programs, they represented only 10% of all special education doctoral programs in 1987 and 9% in 2008. Thus, over time, the rate growth in the number of special education teacher preparation programs was not matched by increased numbers of doctoral programs.
The Faculty Shortage Study of 2001
The 2001 Faculty Shortage Study was initiated in 1998 with the final report produced 3 years later (Smith et al., 2001). Possibly, the most singular important findings from the 2001 study surrounded the imbalance between the supply of new doctoral graduates who were seeking a career path in academe and demand for new special education faculty. Of this, there was little doubt: A substantial shortage of special education faculty existed and that shortage contributed to the persistent and chronic shortage of special education teachers.
The first data gathered were in 1999 and focused on the nation’s doctoral programs in special education (Smith, Pion, Tyler, & Gilmore, 2003). After a systematic and comprehensive search, 84 programs were identified as having concentrations or doctoral majors in special education; however, 2 of these programs offered only one concentration (i.e., visual disabilities only, learning disabilities only). Therefore, 82 comprehensive doctoral programs in special education were identified in 1999. Seven additional programs were found, but they were best described as emphasis areas offered within other majors. None of these emphasis programs offered students more than 12 credit hours that focused on any special education topic. They were not included in the study.
While the number of special education doctoral programs identified is important, so too was their production capacity (i.e., the number of students enrolled and the number of graduates produced annually). In 1999, programs with capacity were defined as those programs with at least seven students enrolled in coursework and also producing at least two doctoral graduates per year. Not all program coordinators provided complete enrollment and production data. Of the 75 programs with complete data, only 45 (60%) met criterion for capacity (see Table 1). Most of the coordinators indicated that these programs were underenrolled, and they could accommodate more students. They also reported that a majority of their students were studying on a part-time basis. By using data from the Survey of Earned Doctorates collected each year by the National Opinion Research Center (NORC), enrollment in doctoral programs had declined by some 30% across a 20-year period (Sanderson, Dugoni, Hoffer, & Selfa, 1999; Thurgood, & Weinman, 1991). Student enrollment and annual graduation rates were also following a downward trend.
1999 Doctoral Program Capacity
As we mentioned previously, not all doctoral graduates assume positions in higher education. In fact, consistently before 1999, less than half of doctoral graduates became higher education faculty. Approximately 50% of these doctoral graduates held nonfaculty positions, 21% held administrative positions, and 16% were teaching in schools or other service agencies. A small group (6%) worked primarily as researchers and regardless of where they worked devoted very little time to teaching classes. The remaining 7% worked in a variety of roles, most relating to education (e.g., educational test publishing, computer programming). The implication of these findings was that (a) the supply of new graduates was in jeopardy and (b) the demand for them was higher than ever and on the rise.
Based on the 2001 study, researchers, advisors, and stakeholders made three suggestions about how to increase the capacity and production rate of doctoral graduates. First, we encouraged the development of new doctoral programs, expanding the overall number of doctoral-granting universities in special education. Two strategies related to the number and size of doctoral programs were posed: (a) expand the amount and depth of coursework at the existing emphasis programs so they could develop into comprehensive doctoral programs and (b) create new doctoral programs at universities where strong teacher education programs already existed. We also suggested ways to increase the proportion of graduates assuming careers as teacher educators. We encouraged program administrators to devote more time and energy to recruitment of doctoral students, particularly those with career interests in becoming faculty members. We felt that for these proposed strategies to be effective, the entire special education community (e.g., parents, advocates, policy makers, researchers, teacher educators) and the federal government needed to work together to develop and implement effective solutions. In 2001, as an immediate first step, stakeholders asked Office of Special Education Programs (OSEP) to increase appropriations for leadership preparation, building upon their long-standing grant-program (Hardman & West, 2003). We also suggested that funds for upcoming competitions should be targeted strategically to (a) recruit students who had a higher probability of becoming college and university faculty, (b) fund more full-time students, (c) increase the size of the national doctoral student body, and (d) seed the development of new programs.
Actions After The 2001 Faculty Shortage Study
After the release of the findings from The 2001 Faculty Shortage Study, many direct actions were taken with the aim of increasing the supply of new doctorates in special education (see West and Hardman in this special issue). Government officials, officers of the Higher Education Consortium for Special Education (HECSE; the nation’s organization of special education doctoral programs) and coordinators of HECSE member programs, and representatives from the Teacher Education Division of the Council for Exceptional Children met in a series of Blue Ribbon Task Forces. Congress increased the appropriations for the IDEA personnel preparation agenda, and OSEP funded more training projects for doctoral study. The stakeholders’ calls for action were answered.
Special Education Doctoral Programs in 2008
Some 10 years after the 2001 study was concluded, questions began to emerge. Did a shortage of faculty still exist? Were the stakeholders’ calls for action effective? Had the special education faculty shortage improved? Questions from stakeholders and policy makers arose about the suppliers (i.e., doctoral programs), the supply (i.e., students and graduates), the nature and size of current and predicted demand (i.e., the special education teacher preparation programs), and actual market demand (i.e., current job searches for new faculty). In an attempt to be responsive to future demand and adjust doctoral training programs accordingly, faculty wanted to know what expertise might be needed in the future. Therefore, the work of the Special Education Faculty Needs Assessment (SEFNA) project was initiated.
The first phase of the overall effort sought to assess the number of special education doctoral programs, their size in terms of doctoral student enrollment, their production rate in terms of annual graduates, and how these factors compared with the findings from the study of doctoral programs of the 2001 study. Every effort was made to collect data for SEFNA that would allow for such comparisons. Primary research questions that guided this effort included the following:
Was there a change in the number of doctoral programs?
Were there changes in the capacity of these programs (e.g., size, concentration areas, number of currently enrolled students, number of graduates produced over a 10-year period)?
Were there improvements in the supply of new graduates, particularly those assuming a career in higher education?
Method
In this article, we are reporting on one part of the overall SEFNA project, the study of special education doctoral programs. It was the first phase of the SEFNA effort because the doctoral programs operating in 2008 had to be identified first. The programs needed to be identified before the studies of current students and recent graduates.
Participants
In some regard, one could consider the doctoral programs in special education as the participants in this aspect of the overall SEFNA work. The actual participants were those individuals with direct administrative responsibilities for their university’s doctoral program, either the department chairperson or the program coordinator.
Every avenue possible was used to identify all special education doctoral programs active in 2008. As a first step, the list of potential doctoral programs identified by the 2001 study was used. That list included schools that had closed their special education doctoral program, active programs, programs with emphases or minors in special education, and programs under development or being considered for initiation. All members of the HECSE, the organization of doctoral programs in the United States, were solicited to provide names of doctoral programs in their states and in the nation that may offer either an online or traditional special education doctoral program. In addition, we included in the possible pool all programs that received funding from OSEP for leadership (doctoral) projects in special education. Programs that focused on related services (e.g., speech-language pathology) or educational administration were not included. Also, we conducted an Internet search for all other possible doctoral programs.
After this extensive process, we identified a potential pool of 112 special education doctoral training programs. Follow-up phone calls were made to verify the university sampling frame. The sample population decreased to 102 doctoral programs. Some programs were excluded from the study for a number of reasons. First, some coordinators indicated that they could not answer questions on the survey because the special education aspects of their doctoral preparation were “too blended” and integrated into other content areas. Second, so as not to count a program twice, universities that are the hosts of joint doctorates received special consideration. Universities that do not have a stand-alone doctoral program (e.g., University of California–Berkeley) were not included. The other or joint program with the special education concentration (e.g., San Francisco State University) was, however, included. Of course, programs that had recently closed or reported no special education doctoral program were not sent surveys to complete. At the time of the study, we were confident that the total number of doctoral programs to be surveyed was 97.
Once we had arrived at what we believed to be an accurate list of doctoral programs, we identified the correct persons to contact and sent the links to the online survey and related information. We obtained a 97% response rate to the SEFNA doctoral program survey (94 of 97 programs responded), as compared with a 100% response rate to the 2001 doctoral program survey.
Questionnaire
The Survey of Doctoral Training Programs in Special Education was modeled after The Survey of Doctoral Programs created for The 2001 Faculty Shortage Study (Smith et al., 2001). Similar to the earlier survey, the current survey was designed to gather information on program admission selectivity, characteristics of students enrolled in the program at the time of the study, types of financial support offered by the program, average doctoral production, characteristics of faculty teaching in their doctoral training program at the time of the study, and characteristics of recent faculty searches. Copies of both surveys can be downloaded from the SEFNA project website at http://www.cgu.edu/sefna
Study Procedures
We began sending out emails with links to the online Remark™ survey and related instructions in August 2008. These emails were distributed in waves as we were still identifying the appropriate contact persons who would complete the survey, which included requests for answers to detailed questions about the program, its faculty, students, and other demographic issues. The last completed survey was submitted in November 2008. Each coordinator was given a financial incentive of US $150 for completing the survey and an additional US $25 for submitting the survey by a specific date. Incentives were provided in the form of gift cards. Statistical Package for the Social Sciences (SPSS) was used to conduct univariate analyses to examine measures of distribution, central tendency, and dispersion.
Results
We focused particularly on variables that would provide information about the supply of special education doctoral graduates needed to meet current and projected demand. We paid particular attention to the supply needed to meet the demand for college and university faculty members. We also wanted to be certain that data gathered would allow for comparisons with findings obtained 10 years before. We first report issues related to the three primary research questions we outlined previously: change in the number of doctoral programs, change in capacity (e.g., size in terms of enrollment, concentrations, graduate production rates), and supply of new graduates. We then present additional findings about characteristics (staffing, faculty diversity, student support) of these doctoral programs and external funding. We conclude this section by reporting on projected attrition.
Number of Doctoral Programs
Four of the 82 programs included in The 2001 Faculty Shortage Study (Smith et al., 2001) had closed, 11 new doctoral programs had opened, 1 previously closed program had reopened, and 3 emphasis programs expanded and now offer a doctorate in special education. In addition, we identified a new category of special education doctoral programs: online doctoral programs. All of the fully online programs we identified were at for-profit institutions of higher education. Only 2, however, are included in the analysis because we were unable to contact a person at the other 2 programs. These changes, including the emergence of online special education doctoral programs resulted in an overall net increase of 15 new doctoral programs. At the time of the study, no traditional doctoral programs also offered a totally online doctoral program.
Capacity
Capacity of doctoral programs can be defined by a number of different characteristics. In this study, we specifically asked doctoral program coordinators about the size of their programs’ doctoral student body, the annual number of doctoral graduates for each of the last 5 years, and concentration areas available.
Enrollment and graduation
The size of student enrollment and the number of graduates produced by the 2009 special education doctoral programs vary. Almost one third of the programs reported having more than 18 students currently enrolled and producing more than three graduates per year. An additional 29% of these programs have at least 13 graduate students currently enrolled and produce at least two graduates per year. It is important to note that many new programs, although having students in the pipeline, had produced few, if any, graduates at the time of the study. Therefore, the production rate shown in Table 2 most likely underestimates the current situation.
2009 Doctoral Program Capacity
Concentrations
The nation’s doctoral programs offer many different concentrations or areas of study, including what might be considered low incidence disabilities. More than half of the traditional programs, those not offered through online only programs, offer concentrations in general special education (mild/moderate and/or cross-categorical disabilities), learning disabilities, emotional or behavioral disabilities, and early childhood or early intervention. Less than 10% offer concentrations in physical disabilities, youth with disabilities in correctional facilities, deaf/blindness, other health impairments, or traumatic brain injury. None of these doctoral programs offer a concentration in adapted physical education. Although all of the online programs offer a concentration in educational leadership (administration), less than 20% of the traditional programs have this option.
Other Characteristics of Doctoral Programs
One important characteristic we found is that all doctoral programs in special education offer a teacher preparation track in addition to the doctoral program. Regardless of their status, whether tenured, tenure-line, or research faculty, many faculty members teach in both the special education doctoral and teacher preparation programs. Most traditional doctoral programs, those not offered through for-profit online programs, are offered through publicly supported universities (83.7%); all others are offered at private universities. All of the completely online programs at the time of our data collection were offered at for-profit universities.
Staffing patterns
While almost all special education programs use a variety of staffing patterns (see Table 3), it is the rare doctoral program that does not have tenure-track faculty positions, those primarily at for-profit institutions that offer fully online programs do not have tenure-rank faculty options. Typically, at doctoral-granting university programs, some eight tenure-line faculty members work with three full-time, non-tenure-line faculty members (e.g., research faculty, clinical faculty, adjuncts). Regardless of the type of position faculty occupy, a majority report allocating all of their time to special education activities. Again, it is important to note that many work in both the doctoral and teacher education programs at their universities.
Doctoral Program Faculty Characteristics
Note: FT = full-time; PT = part-time; SE = special education.
Faculty diversity
We also collected information on the diversity of the faculty at these doctoral programs (see also Table 3). Although these data were reported by the program coordinators and are not self-reports, they do provide useful metrics to assess diversity of special education doctoral faculty in place at the time of data collection. A total of 17% of faculty belong to a historically underrepresented racial group. Specifically, 83% of these faculty are White, 7% Black, 4% Asian, 4% American Indian or Alaska Native, 1% Native Hawaiian or Pacific Islander, and 1% as biracial or multiracial. Only 4% identified their ethnic identity as Spanish, Hispanic, or Latino.
Student support
Most traditional doctoral programs do provide financial support for their students, and most often it comes in the form of tuition waivers (see also Table 3). A little over half of the doctoral programs offer traineeships, which includes at a minimum both tuition and stipends, funded by an OSEP training project. Further about three fourths of these programs offer research or teaching assistantships (79.5% and 71.6%, respectively).
External funding
Although doctoral programs represent only 9% of the special education preparation programs in the United States, they hold a significant proportion of grants and contracts (see Table 4). For both the Institute of Education Science’s Special Education Research Program and the Special Education Research Training Program, special education doctoral faculty involved in doctoral programs hold at least three fourths of these active projects. This suggests that they are a significant contributor to the nation’s research efforts related to students with disabilities. These faculty are both (a) the predominate producers of research and (b) the suppliers of the next generation of researchers. When examining OSEP’s discretionary grants program, faculty at special education doctoral programs also hold a majority of personnel preparation grants. They hold less technical assistance center contracts (centers that work with the states and are often operated by non-IHEs).
Active Special Education Grant Programs by Grantee Type
Note: SE = special education. Non-IHE grantee category includes non-university-affiliated research organizations, for example, Westat, SRI International, and AIR. IES Research Grant projects include those active as of July, 2011.
Attrition
Doctoral-granting universities will experience a faculty turnover rate of great magnitude across the next 5 years. They will lose one half to two thirds of their faculty due to retirement alone. This is in addition to normal additional attrition due to promotions, transfers to other types of positions (e.g., deanships, other academic administrative positions), or leaving academe.
Discussion
The findings from our assessment of the current status of special education doctoral programs answered the three questions we posed initially. Over the 10 years since The 2001 Faculty Shortage Study, the number of doctoral programs in special education increased. The capacity of these programs in terms of students enrolled and graduates produced also increased substantially. In addition, the percentage of doctoral graduates assuming careers in academe improved from a decades-long level below 50% to a level considerably higher (63%; NORC, 2010).
Our work also revealed some other important findings about these programs, which are the suppliers of a variety of doctoral-level personnel who benefit students with disabilities. First, significant efforts by universities and federal policy makers resulted in substantial improvement in both the capacity of doctoral programs and in the supply of new faculty. Second, despite these gains, projected attrition will cause a demand for new faculty that cannot be met by current supply. In the following sections, we provide information that hopefully will raise concerns to a level that policy makers will take action and curtail an upcoming faculty shortage of unprecedented levels.
Improvement in the Supply
We compared findings from The 2001 Faculty Shortage Study with those from SEFNA and found that considerable changes in doctoral programs occurred in the 10-year period. The overall supply of new graduates clearly increased; more doctoral graduates were produced. In addition, a higher proportion of these graduates assumed careers in academe. We believe that credit for the increased number of doctoral programs, the improved capacity and production rates of these programs, and the change in the proportion of graduates seeking and accepting positions in higher education is due to concerted actions of OSEP and university officials.
Increased capacity
The faculty shortage in special education has been a persistent and long-term problem. Increasing the supply of new doctoral graduates who become teacher educators was no small feat. The number of doctoral programs had to increase. The overall capacity (enrollment and graduation rate) of doctoral programs had to improve, and the proportion of new graduates assuming positions in higher education as special education teacher educators had to change. All three of these variables changed in a positive direction since the 2001 study.
When compared with doctoral programs active in 1999, we found that there were 16% more of these doctoral programs in 2009 (97 programs total) than in 1999 (82 programs). In 2007, it is estimated that 296 special education doctoral degrees total or an average of three degrees per program were awarded, compared with 213 special education doctoral degrees total or an average of two degrees per program in 2001 (Smith et al, 2001). This represents an increase of 28% in the number of graduates. In 2009, 56 programs reported serving seven or more doctoral students and producing at least two graduates a year compared with the 45 programs in 1999 that reported the same statistics. It is also important to note that the 19 new doctoral programs are increasing their capacity to add substantially to the supply. Although their enrollments are developing, many of them at the time of the data collection were just beginning to graduate students.
Based on the 2009 survey, both the overall number of graduates has increased and the proportion of them who are on a career path to become faculty has also improved. We provide considerable detail about the students and graduates of these programs in the next article of this special issue (see Tyler, Montrosse, and Smith, 2012, [in this issue]). It is important to, however, mention here that the highest percentage of new doctoral graduates on record is entering the higher education workforce. For decades, the percentage of new special education doctoral graduates becoming faculty was below 50% (NORC, 2010; Smith et al., 2003). In 2009, that percentage rose to 63% (NORC).
Federal role
We believe that federal actions are in large part responsible for many of the improvements in the supply of new faculty. The importance of the federal role in the special education enterprise cannot be underestimated. As part of the SEFNA effort, we studied OSEP leadership (doctoral) preparation projects that were concluded by 2008 and also all projects active in the spring of 2009. (For a complete report about the federal role in doctoral preparation, see Smith et al., 2011.) Findings from those studies illustrate the fragile nature of both the suppliers (doctoral programs) and the supply of new graduates they produce. First, OSEP is the primary federal funding source providing financial assistance to doctoral students in special education. Although many doctoral-granting universities award assistantships to graduate students to aid faculty with teaching and research, the number of these positions per university program are few. The Institute of Education Sciences is the federal agency that funds research projects in special education. Those projects typically include several research assistantships that support doctoral students. It is, however, OSEP’s personnel preparation projects that provide financial assistance in the form of tuition, stipends, and other support (e.g., book allowances, travel funds, health insurance) to cohorts of doctoral students at many programs.
OSEP’s commitment to the leadership (doctoral) preparation agenda was critical to the increased supply. It stimulated the development of most of the new doctoral programs. OSEP increased the number of doctoral preparation projects by increasing its allocations to this component of its training grants. In fiscal year (FY) 1998, US $10.5 million, in FY 2001, US $11.9 million was allocated, and the total annual funding rose to a high of US $25.8 in FY 2010. (See West and Hardman in this issue for a 10-year history of OSEP’s funding of leadership preparation projects.) In FY 2011, 116 active special education doctoral training projects were funded though OSEP’s leadership initiative (Network, 2011). These projects are awarded to universities and primarily support graduate students seeking a doctorate. Students graduate at a very high rate and most study on a full-time basis (Smith et al., 2011). Also, many projects specifically recruit students who have career interests of becoming faculty members and have developed a curriculum specifically for such preparation. Clearly, without this funding provided by OSEP, the supply of new doctorates would diminish greatly.
Projected Attrition at Doctoral-Granting Universities
Although the supply of new doctoral graduates assuming faculty positions, particularly for special education teacher education positions improved across the past 10 years, one finding of our work is particularly disturbing and surprising. Doctoral-granting universities with special education programs are projected to lose one half to two thirds of their faculty due to retirements alone. On average, each of these programs has eight full-time faculty members. Therefore, we estimate that somewhere between 388 and 582 faculty members will retire from these 97 programs within the next 5 years.
The programs that supply the nation with its special education researchers; teacher educators; doctoral-level leadership personnel who work in school districts, state agencies, and the federal government; and advocates are in jeopardy of losing the capacity of either maintaining or increasing supply. These programs not only provide the supply of new faculty to the 1,000 college and universities that offer a special education teacher education only programs but also replenish themselves by graduating students who fill positions at doctoral-granting universities. With capacity reduced by more than half, there will be no possibility for upcoming demand for either new researchers or teacher educators to be met.
Evidence from the past 10 years has shown that with concerted action of policy makers, federal government officials, and university administrators that supply can be increased. Now is the time for action plans to be developed and implemented. West and Hardman (2012, [in this issue]) present policy actions that should be taken to abate an impending faculty shortage of overwhelming and unprecedented magnitude.
Footnotes
The views expressed herein are those of the authors and do not necessarily reflect those of the U.S. Department of Education.
The author(s) declared no potential conflicts of interest with respect to the research, authorship, and/or publication of this article.
The author(s) disclosed receipt of the following financial support for the research, authorship, and/or publication of this article: The contents of this article were developed under a grant from U.S. Department of Education’s Office of Special Education Programs (H325U070001).