Supply and Demand for Doctoral Personnel in Special Education and Communication Doisorders

Abstract

Recent changes in federal support for leadership training have raised the issue of supply and demand for special education professionals with doctoral degrees. It was the purpose of this study to operationalize supply and demand in this labor market and to obtain measures of each over time. Using data from the Center for Educational Statistics as a measure of supply and counts of the frequency of position announcements in the Chronicle of Higher Education as a measure of demand, it was determined that in special education demand may soon exceed supply. This situation was considered especially serious because the measure of supply is likely to be an overestimate. In communication disorders, demand is growing, but supply has consistently exceeded demand. However, demand may be seriously underestimated because few clinical positions are advertised in the Chronicle and the number of clinical positions that require doctoral degrees in communication disorders is great.