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Major · Education

Teaching students who learn differently: what special education actually prepares you for

Special Education and Teaching, General prepares you to design and deliver instruction for students with disabilities across all grade levels — preschool through secondary school. About 5,456 degrees are awarded annually across 492 colleges, making it a specialized but widely available major with a direct path to a licensed teaching credential.

Schools offering
492
Annual completions
5,456
Typical degree level
Associate's + Bachelor's
Median earnings (5yr)
$51k

About this major

Special Education and Teaching, General is an explicitly vocational major — its purpose is to prepare you to teach students with disabilities in licensed K–12 settings. The CIP definition covers the full scope: designing educational services for children or adults with special learning needs, diagnosing learning disabilities, developing individualized education plans, teaching and supervising special education students, and understanding the laws and policies that govern the field. Programs typically include coursework in educational psychology, behavioral assessment, IEP writing, differentiated instruction, and federal special education law (primarily IDEA), alongside methods courses for specific disability categories.

Coursework is applied from the start. Field placements in special education classrooms begin early in most programs and build toward a full-semester student teaching requirement in a supervised special education setting — similar in structure to the clinical placements in other health and human services fields. The degree exists at both the associate's and bachelor's level, though in practice the bachelor's is the functional entry credential: all four career paths tracked for this major list a bachelor's degree as the typical required education, and the top ten institutions by completions all award exclusively at the bachelor's level.

About 5,456 degrees are awarded annually across 492 institutions — a notable contrast to the 31,672 annual completions in elementary education, which is available at over 1,100 schools. That smaller scale means competitive programs are somewhat more concentrated, and Western Governors University leads nationally with 604 completions annually, followed by Grand Canyon University (350) and Illinois State University (194). The major attracts students who want a teaching career with a more targeted clinical orientation — identifying and responding to individual learning profiles rather than managing a general-population classroom.

Section 3 · Careers

Where this major leads

Occupations most often associated with this major, from the federal BLS+O*NET crosswalk. Job-growth projections and median wages are national.

Occupation Median wage Job growth Typical education
Special education teachers, secondary school $70k -1.6% Bachelor's degree
Special education teachers, middle school $65k -1.9% Bachelor's degree
Special education teachers, all other $67k +1.1% Bachelor's degree
Special education teachers, preschool $62k +1.4% Bachelor's degree
Section 4 · Earnings

Earnings at a glance

Median graduate earnings from the federal College Scorecard, 5 and 10 years out.

Median 5-year earnings

$51k

Associate's vs Bachelor's — early-career earnings

Associate's

$41k

Bachelor's

$51k

Who this major is for

You may be well matched to this major if you're drawn to the diagnostic side of teaching — figuring out why a student isn't learning and building a specific response to it, rather than delivering curriculum to a full classroom. People who do well here tend to have both patience and precision: the patience to work with students who progress slowly or inconsistently, and the precision to track data on individual goals and adjust instruction based on what the data shows. If you've worked with children or adults with disabilities in any capacity — tutoring, camp counseling, therapy assistance, family caregiving — and found that work engaging rather than frustrating, that's a useful signal.

Think twice if your primary interest is teaching a subject — history, math, literature — in the way secondary education majors do. Special education is less about content delivery and more about access to content: your job is to make the curriculum reachable for students who need modified instruction, not to teach the curriculum itself in a conventional sense. Think twice, too, if geographic flexibility is constrained; the shortage conditions that create the clearest job opportunities in this field are concentrated in rural districts and high-need urban schools, and restricting yourself to a single metro area may limit your options in a field where two of the four career tracks show projected employment declines. The bachelor's earnings picture ($51,354 five-year median) is stronger than most teaching majors, but teacher compensation is still governed by public budgets and collective bargaining — the same ceiling applies here as in elementary or secondary education.

Section 6 · Where to study

Top colleges for Special Education and Teaching, General

Ranked by annual completions at the associate's or bachelor's level — a proxy for program scale.

College Location Assoc. Bach. Total
Western Governors University Salt Lake City, UT 0 604 604
Grand Canyon University Phoenix, AZ 0 350 350
Illinois State University Normal, IL 0 194 194
St. Joseph's University-New York Brooklyn, NY 0 184 184
Slippery Rock University of Pennsylvania Slippery Rock, PA 0 102 102
Western Washington University Bellingham, WA 0 99 99
Commonwealth University of Pennsylvania Bloomsburg, PA 0 73 73
Northern Arizona University Flagstaff, AZ 0 68 68
Utah State University Logan, UT 0 66 66
Northern Illinois University Dekalb, IL 0 63 63
Section 7 · Explore sideways

Related majors to explore

Elementary Education and Teaching

31,672 completions/yr

Early Childhood Education and Teaching

19,347 completions/yr

Education, General

8,583 completions/yr

Physical Education Teaching and Coaching

4,787 completions/yr

Secondary Education and Teaching

4,057 completions/yr

Education/Teaching of Individuals in Early Childhood Special Education Programs

2,223 completions/yr

Kindergarten/Preschool Education and Teaching

1,867 completions/yr

Education/Teaching of Individuals in Elementary Special Education Programs

589 completions/yr

Considering this direction?

We've taken a hard look at the debt, earnings trajectory, and degree-level tradeoffs for the Special Education and Teaching, General field. Read our verdict before you commit.

Is Special Education and Teaching, General worth it? Read verdict
Section 9 · Frequently asked

Common questions

What do special education majors actually study?
The coursework covers learning disability assessment, individualized education plan (IEP) development, behavioral intervention strategies, differentiated instruction, and the federal and state laws that govern special education services — primarily IDEA. Programs include substantial supervised fieldwork, typically culminating in a student teaching placement in a self-contained or inclusive special education setting. The pace is applied and procedural, similar to other licensure-track education majors, but with a heavier focus on diagnostic thinking and one-on-one intervention design.
Do I need a bachelor's degree, or can I teach special education with an associate's?
In practice, a bachelor's degree is required. All four career destinations in this field — special education teachers at the preschool, middle, secondary, and other levels — list a bachelor's degree as the typical required education. The top ten institutions by completions all show zero associate's degree graduates, which reflects that the associate's pathway functions almost exclusively as a transfer vehicle to a four-year program rather than a standalone credential. Associate's completers in this field report a five-year median of $41,141, substantially below the $51,354 bachelor's figure, largely because they haven't yet completed the credential needed to work as licensed teachers.
What jobs do special education graduates get, and what do they pay?
The four tracked career paths are special education teachers at the secondary ($69,590 median wage), all-other ($67,430), middle ($64,880), and preschool ($62,190) levels. These wages run consistently above the $62,340 median for elementary school teachers, which makes special education one of the better-compensated teaching majors at the bachelor's level. Each path requires a state teaching license in addition to the degree, and licensing reciprocity varies by state — something to research if you plan to move after graduation.
Why do I keep hearing about special education shortages when the job-growth data is mixed?
Both things are true, and the nuance matters. Secondary and middle school special education teachers show projected declines of -1.6% and -1.9%, meaning national employment is expected to contract slightly. But preschool special education teachers show +1.4% projected growth, and the all-other category shows +1.1%. Shortages are heavily geographic and setting-specific — rural districts, high-need urban schools, and states with poor compensation often have chronic vacancies regardless of what the national trend shows. The net picture is that the field is not uniformly growing, but targeted job seekers with geographic flexibility have substantially better odds than the headline numbers suggest.
How does special education compare to elementary education or early childhood education?
Special education differs in its population focus: you're not teaching a general classroom, you're serving students identified with specific learning, emotional, or developmental disabilities, often in a blend of inclusion and pull-out settings. The five-year median for special education bachelor's completers ($51,354) is higher than elementary education's ($48,274). Completions are considerably smaller — 5,456 annually versus 31,672 for elementary education — and offered at 492 institutions versus over 1,100. Early Childhood Special Education is a related but distinct major (about 2,223 completions) that focuses specifically on the birth-to-five population. If your interest is broader child development and not specifically disability-focused instruction, Early Childhood Education or Elementary Education may be the better comparison.
What are common next steps after a special education degree?
The most direct path is classroom teaching with a special education license, which in most states covers a broad category of disabilities at one or more grade bands. Many teachers later pursue a master's degree — in special education, school counseling, or educational administration — which is often required for advancement into instructional coordinator, diagnostician, or administrator roles. Some graduates move into related service roles like behavior specialist or transition coordinator over time. The bachelor's degree itself does not close off those pathways; it opens the teaching license, which is the entry credential for all of them.