What Are My Job Prospects with a Degree in Educational Technology?

Secondary Education

Still deciding where to earn your degree? Our rankings for the Best Master’s in Educational Technology Degrees and Best Online Master’s in Educational Technology Degrees can help.

A degree in educational technology can take you many places. Most commonly, graduates with an ed tech degree work in a K-12 setting. Many technology integration specialist jobs and instructional technologist jobs are at the building or district level.

However, there are plenty of other possibilities. An ed tech degree could also translate into providing training for a nonprofit or a corporation. It could also mean working with a college, university, or town library.

Considering the wide variety of positions available in instructional technology, there’s no single average salary that’s representative of all these occupations. Job titles commonly held by ed tech graduates include:

Instructional Coordinator
Chief Learning Officer
eLearning Developer
Training and Development Specialist
Instructional Technologist
Interface and Multimedia Designer
Performance Support Specialist
Curriculum Development Specialist
Training Director
Technology Integration Specialist
Teacher (K-12 classroom)

And the list goes on. While all of these are viable options with an ed tech degree, many people in one of these degree tracks begin their academic program as a practicing classroom teacher. A large number of these teachers will continue in the same role after graduation. In the Michigan State University Master of Arts in Educational Technology program, for example, fully 75 percent of the students start and end their degree program as classroom teachers.

But the other occupations in ed tech also have great potential. Based on data from the Bureau of Labor Statistics, job openings for instructional coordinators are expected to increase by 10 percent between 2016 and 2026. For training and development specialists, that figure is 11 percent. Both of these are faster than the projection for all occupations, which is roughly 7 percent.

Some educational technologists will focus their skills on the design and development of learning software or applications. This is an area of particularly high growth. The number of job opportunities for software developers is expected to increase 24 percent by 2026.

The average salaries for these occupations vary widely. As any teacher can tell you, K-12 teaching is not a get-rich-quick profession. The median salary for elementary, middle school, and high school teachers is $55,800, $56,720, and $58,030 respectively.

For positions outside of K-12 classrooms, the pay is generally higher. Training and development specialists have a typical yearly salary of $59,020. For instructional coordinators, the median salary is $62,460 per year.

Software development and training management are the most lucrative areas of ed tech to pursue. As a software developer, you can expect to earn, on average, $102,280 per year. As a training and development manager, you can earn an average of $105,830 per year.