An educational administration degree prepares its students for management and leadership positions within educational organizations. These courses focus on empowering their students with the skills, techniques, and resources needed to improve these institutions. While the curriculum varies based on where you are studying and your particular area of specialization, common areas of skill development include training in curriculum development, human resource management, educational law, research in pedagogy, school finances, and training in leadership skills.
The degree empowers its students with holistic skills crucial in many potential educational and non-educational sectors. While there are many career paths a graduate in educational administration could walk down, these five are particularly suited to this degree.
School Principal
Average Annual Salary: 93,019
A school principal is responsible for creating an environment conducive to learning for its organization’s students. Their leadership is supposed to provide a clear pedagogical vision for other teachers and administrators to follow. They are the ones who are responsible for ensuring that a school’s curriculum meets the standards of their district and gives students the ability to experience growth. They are also responsible for staff supervision, school budgeting, parent and community outreach, and advocating the school’s needs to the district.
Those interested in pursuing a career in educational leadership and becoming principals will need at least a post-graduate degree for this position. Choosing a relevant specialization, like a master’s in educational administration, will empower potential applicants with all the skills they need to succeed in this position. It ranges from having a nuanced understanding of the applicability of different leadership styles in varying contexts to being exposed to the latest developments and techniques for long-term educational development and planning.
School Superintendent
Average Annual Salary: 135,414
A school superintendent is responsible for overseeing an entire school district. As the top administrative position within the district, these individuals are responsible for policies that outline the curriculum and the standards that individual schools must follow and meet. They are responsible for the district’s budget and resource allocation to individual schools, for evaluating key performance metrics of schools, such as student achievement data, and for working with school leaders and staff in underperforming schools to help them enhance their learning outcomes. They are also responsible for advocating the needs of the district at a local or federal level and are the ones who are accountable should the district not meet its standards.
Having extensive training in educational administration can prove vital for success as a superintendent. It gives students training in the development of over-arching policies and minimum standards. It trains them in the communication and leadership skills needed to manage an entire district and advocate and negotiate its needs with state and federal officials. It enables them to adopt a data-driven approach, the ability to evaluate data about student performance to identify existing gaps within the district’s schools and create innovative solutions to boost student performance.
Education Consultant
Average Annual Salary: 62,897
An educational consultant will work alongside teachers and administrators to create or modify the pedagogical approach to make it more friendly toward student engagement and growth. Educational consultants can work as freelancers, offering their services to institutions that need them to fix particular barriers to learning they are experiencing, or they can work full-time for a consulting firm or educational institution.
An educational consultant must be able to craft a curriculum that exposes students to learning without overburdening them while having training in improving instructional techniques and strategies to elicit greater engagement from the class. They must also have sharp analytical minds, able to analyze data metrics of an individual school, such as student performance, attendance rates, college and career readiness, and discipline and behavior metrics. It is so that they can fully understand exactly how a school is performing, where they are lagging, and how they can efficiently tackle this problem.
The training a degree in educational administration provides in curriculum development, instructional design, and being able to analyze data are all crucial for this role.
Education Policy Analyst
Average Annual Salary: 63,336
An educational policy analyst examines the impact, effectiveness, and shortcomings of existing educational policies at the state and federal levels. Those in this profession can work for the government in creating recommendations or work for think tanks and pressure groups advocating for policy change.
Those interested in such a career must have extensive knowledge of the existing policy and law surrounding educational institutions. They must be able to analyze the performance of these existing systems and objectively evaluate their performance. Once they have identified any shortcomings or areas of improvement, they can propose policy alternatives.
An educational policy analyst must have a complex understanding of the existing education law and governance. They must be aware of the latest techniques and technologies in education and their effectiveness. They must have a rigorous methodological approach to data analysis. Finally, they must have strong communication skills, both oral and written, to translate their recommendations and present these ideas to important stakeholders within educational policy. An educational administration degree works on all these skills, from the leadership and management needed to communicate ideas to the data analysis skills required to evaluate existing policies.
Human Resource Manager
Average Annual Salary: 71, 828
The skills learned in an educational administration degree are also highly applicable and desired in non-educational sectors. A job in human resources is suited to this degree. A human resource manager is responsible for managing and overseeing the life cycle of employees within an organization. It includes recruitment, onboarding, performance assessment, administration of leaves, and retirement or termination. These employees will rely on the human resource department to ensure that their needs and requirements from the institution are met, and human resource managers, therefore, play a crucial role in determining employee satisfaction, something directly linked to the organization’s productivity.
The leadership and management skills learned in educational administration degrees are highly applicable to the role of a human resource manager, where professionals must manage employee needs and relations while also trying to meet the standards of productivity established by senior management. Further, the development of communication and interpersonal skills in educational administration are highly applicable in HR jobs where managers must be able to effectively comprehend and communicate the needs of employees and resolve conflicts amongst them.
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For those with an educational administration degree looking for opportunities outside the education sector, working in human resources allows you to enter virtually any industry.
Conclusion
An educational administration degree imparts its students with a holistic set of skills, where they are exposed to general leadership, communication, management, and data analysis skills while also receiving training in educational policy, methods, techniques, technologies, and law. Its students possess the skills to succeed in several industries, even ones outside the education sector. While there is no limit on the potential job opportunities available to graduates with this degree, the five professions identified in this article are examples of high-paying, competitive positions where an educational administration degree gives an advantage against the competition.
