"Entry Costs and the Supply of Public School Teachers"
Abstract: This paper examines the impact of entry costs on the likelihood that recent college graduates become public school teachers. 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. Either college course offerings simply meet students' pre-existing interest in teaching careers, or the presence of teacher certification programs has a direct effect on undergraduates' career choices. I combine Barron's ratings of college selectivity, data on the types of teacher certification programs offered by colleges, and NELS data that tracks members of the high school class of 1988 into college and into the workforce. Restricting the sample to individuals who were not considering teaching careers when they were high school seniors, I estimate the marginal effect of the availability of undergraduate teacher certification programs on the likelihood that these students become teachers. The results suggest that graduates from highly selective colleges are very sensitive to entry costs related to the number of years of schooling required for certification, while graduates from less selective colleges are not marginally influenced by these costs. The addition of an undergraduate teacher certification program at a highly selective college may more than double graduates' rate of entry into public school teaching. [draft available upon request: rr2165@columbia.edu]