Jobs for the Major
How this major affects a job search
Let's be real here. If you pick this major, you're going to be a teacher who specializes in assisting those kids who are different enough from their peers to be singled out, but not so different that they would be better off at the Xavier's School for Gifted Youngsters. Luckily enough for you, there's no shortage of kids with special educational needs, so trying to scrounge up a job shouldn't be an issue.
That being said, becoming a teacher is about the only thing in the future for special education majors. Depending on your particular area of study and other factors, you could wind up teaching kids with distinctions ranging from autism to blindness. As such, your exact role will vary. You might be an aide to a specific student or an academic support provider for a group of kids struggling to keep up. But no matter what, you're probably headed for the classroom in some way, shape, or form.
Common Career Fields
Assistive Technology Specialist. One of the many ways people deal with disabilities is through technology—we're talking hearing aids, specialized computer software, and more. Someone needs to manage this technology, teach people how to use it, and fiddle with it when it inevitably decides to stop working. This person needs to know technology, but they also need to know disabilities and how exactly tech can help people overcome them, so this is a great job for a special education major who can tell a motherboard from a kilobyte.
Occupational Therapist. This is where you help people who are disabled to the point where they cannot function as an independent member of society. You'll assist them in their quest to do just that. Maybe their basic motor functions need some training to become stronger, or maybe their reasoning skills aren't up to snuff. As an OT, you'll help students with everything from using a computer to eating.
Rehabilitation Counselor. These are the people that talk to a disabled person, scrutinize various reports about them, determine exactly what they're good at and what they need, and then they pull strings to get them what they need for success. This might include jobs, medical care, or fancy technology that, say, allows a kid with dysgraphia to type up all of his assignments.
Sign Language Interpreter. Deaf people use their hands and a whole 'nother language called American Sign Language (ASL) to talk. The thing is, a lot of people don't know ASL, and there's a pretty good chance that the various employers, teachers, bosses, professors, and other human beings that a deaf person interacts with daily are similarly ignorant. This is where an interpreter comes in, bridging the gap between those who know and use ASL and those who don't.
As an added bonus, interpreters are needed all over the place. If you're interested in this field, you can work way beyond the classroom.
Social Worker. As a social worker, you'll look specifically at, well, the social factors in a disabled person's life—their family, their community, their schooling—and see if something needs changing or at least reexamining. If so, you then do what a rehabilitation counselor does and pull strings to get them the help they need. This can leave you working anywhere from hospitals to the foster care system. While you can definitely work with students in a school, you definitely don't have to.
Special Education Teacher. The name seems pretty self-explanatory, doesn't it? You educate kids who have special needs that can't be accommodated entirely by their regular classroom teachers. These kids run the gamut from needing help keeping up to needing a social boost to needing some extra challenges because their brains are plowing through material faster than their peers' are. Sometimes you'll work in a classroom, sometimes you'll pull kids out, but you'll always be tending to those students who otherwise might get lost in the shuffle.
Speech Language Pathologist. As a speech pathologist, you help kids who can't, won't, or don't often talk, You'll figure out exactly what barriers are in their way and help them cultivate the language tools they need to get by. Since everything from social cues to physical realities impact a student's ability to speak, you'll lean on your background in psychology and sociology as much as anything to help your students develop their chops.
Current unemployment of the major
3.9% (Education)Percentage of majors who get a higher degree after college
56%Stats obtained from this source.