The impact of college course offerings on the supply of academically talented public school teachers

This paper identifies the impact of undergraduate teacher certification programs on the likelihood that recent college graduates enter and remain in public school teaching jobs. More selective postsecondary institutions are far less likely to offer teacher certification programs and those that do offer them are less likely to allow students to complete them within their four undergraduate years. First, to examine the overall relationship between the availability of teacher certification programs and the likelihood that academically talented students enter teaching careers, I combine Barronʹs ratings of college selectivity, detailed data tracking college seniors into the workforce, data on the types of teacher certification programs offered by their colleges, and data on states’ certification requirements. Next, to isolate the causal effect of program offerings, I treat the selection issue related to students sorting into colleges based on pre-existing interest in teaching careers as an omitted variable problem. Using another data set that surveys high school seniors’ career interests and tracks them into college, I estimate an upper bound for the magnitude of the bias in the baseline coefficient estimates. The results suggest that the addition of teacher certification programs that may be completed within four undergraduate years could increase rates of entry into public school teaching by at least 50% among recent graduates of certain selective colleges.