Market Demand for Special Education Faculty

Since 1988, researchers have monitored the extent and severity of the chronic special education (SE) faculty shortage. The present study sought to add to this knowledge base by (a) gathering data on the supply and demand of leadership personnel in SE since the 2001 Faculty Shortage Study; (b) combining and comparing these data with other sources (e.g., Survey of Earned Doctorates [SED]); (c) producing evidence to assess what changes, if any, have occurred in leadership personnel in SE over the past 10 years; (d) describing the characteristics of the SE faculty job market, including recent faculty search trends; and (e) identifying emerging issues as it relates to the demand for SE faculty. Data to answer these questions came from a random sample of job-search coordinators ( n = 36) for SE faculty position advertisements posted in The Chronicle of Higher Education between June and November, 2010. Other sources of data include the Survey of Doctoral Training Programs in Special Education and the Survey of Teacher Education Training Programs in Special Education. The most important finding from this study indicates that although demand markers have improved in the last 10 years, retirements across all SE programs are predicted to increase by 21% per year between 2011 and 2017. Implications of and solutions for the predicted shortage are discussed.