Las Vegas Sun

April 26, 2024

Letter: Why the teacher shortage? Compare the pay

David W. Saba, president of the American Board for Certification of Teacher Excellence, states in his July 10 letter , " College students today are not going into teaching ... "

If you want to know why, look at the starting salaries for college graduates. For accounting majors it's $47,975, for financial/treasury analysts it's $50,476, for project engineers it's $52,258, for management trainees it's $41,894, and for software design ers and develop ers, it's $54,624. For teach ers, starting salaries are $32,488.

What is really frightening about these figures, which come from the National Association of Colleges and Employers, is that many people are retiring, and others are simply leaving the profession because they are fed up with the meager salaries. There has to be a realistic approach to increasing salaries, or American (and Clark County) classrooms will not have sufficient teachers.

Richard J. Mundy, Las Vegas

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