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Ask Slashdot: What To Do With a Math Degree?
First time accepted submitter badmojo17 writes "After achieving her lifelong dream of becoming a public school math teacher, my wife has found the profession to be much more frustrating than she ever expected. She could deal with having a group of disrespectful criminals as students if she had competent administrators supporting her, but the sad truth is that her administration causes more problems on a daily basis than her students do. Our question is this: what other professions are open to a bright young woman with a bachelor's degree in math and a master's degree in education? Without further education, what types of positions or companies might be interested in her as an employee?"
I've know a couple of devs with math degrees, and they were excellent.
I'm sure the NSA would love to have a mathematician.
With a PhD. Ranked in the top of his field. Specializing in cryptography applications.
Some teacher with a BS in Math? No.
Life is hard, and the world is cruel
There are families who value education and aren't satisfied with schools.
If she has additional background in biology, or computing skills, she might find work in a computational biology lab as a staff scientist or assistant ... but the real key is to have a complementary skill, where mathematics helps propel the analysis and work.
OpenSource.MathCancer.org: open source comp bio
I come from a family of teachers, so I know all about internal politics. Unless she no longer wants to teach under any circumstances, change schools first before giving up. Try private if you've only done public, etc. If it is truly her passion, she'll find the school for her.
Or, do what my college roommate did and specialize in Sarbanes-Oxley compliance. Make $120,000 a year and hate yourself.
-Ryan
AUWYHSTOT (Acronyms are Useless When You Have to Spell Them Out Too)
Become a professional gambler.
Troll is not a replacement for I disagree.
Private school math teacher?
My BS in Math hasn't hurt me, but I can't say it really gives you enough depth in math to do a lot with directly. It is a leg up on engineering or science career paths, but I'd be real surprised if anyone could find a position that relied on an undergrad math degree. Math is a beast, 4 years is barely enough time to learn the basics.
I think she's maybe be best off looking at some area where her education degree could be helpful. Training or some type of course design work or something. I'm sure there's a niche there somewhere for someone that is willing to go out and carve it out for themselves. The other option? Go for the PhD and teach education at a college level, lol (or math for that matter). Heck, I've taught a few college level courses as an adjunct myself, you don't usually need an advanced degree. It isn't the best paying job ever, but she might find that teaching a few courses at college level will tell her if she's at all interested in that. It is a BIT different from teaching K-12 in a public school.
"Malo periculosam, libertatem quam quietam servitutem." -- Jefferson
In the Financial industry, "Quants" or Quantitative Analysts use statistics and sophisticated heuristics to feed ideas and information to organizations that deal with trading in the various markets (stocks, options, futures, commodities, forex, etc.), such as hedge funds, statistical arbitrage operations, and private investors. It's a high paying, highly challenging position that deals with all kinds of mathematical functions and techniques, such as optimizing adaptive filters. It's one of the best places for a mathematician to earn a great salary, but your skill and experience needs to be very top level.
Young, shown she can learn and apply reason and logic. Christ, pretty much any career. What does she want to do? She needs to think about what she wants to do, apply for jobs and let them tell her whether she's suitable or what she needs to do to become suitable.
No-one ever said on their death beds that they wanted to spend more time in the office. And your career will never wake up one morning and tell you it doesn't love you any more. Both of these are reasons to do something she actually wants to do.
If she is in the unenviable position of having to trade her time for money in order to live, she should at least do something she has some interest in. Just work out what she wants to do, then get the qualifications or experience to suit. Don't assume her current qualifications should be the starting point for making that decision. She wouldn't necessarily be starting from scratch, having a degree of any kind (especially a Masters degree) gives you a head start in many other areas.
The OP says this person is a "bright young woman", retirement is probably a long way off... hopefully she can find something she likes that makes economic sense also.
Good luck.
- Insurance companies sometimes hire them for statistical analysis of cost/benefits
- Larger hospitals that do research sometimes hire them for statistical analysis of medicines and treatments
- Manufacturing companies sometimes hire them to do statistical analysis of product failures
If she doesn't mind focusing on the statistics branch of math, there are jobs out there.
There are plenty of countries where teachers are actually respected, paid decent wages and supported by their schools - my little brother ended up in Australia, and even though he's not currently in a particularly nice school (inner city...) he still says it's a massive leap above most schools in the US/UK...
1. Head to Vegas.
2. Count Cards.
3. Profit.
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Ada in Aerospace (where crashes actually kill humans) and Pascal in the Delphi RAD business, which is still there.
You're wrong about that. Yes, top of their field mathematicians have a place. But frankly, very few people have the training to be cryptanalysts even with a Ph.D. under their belt. There's theoretical cryptography, and there's real world cryptography; virtually everyone will require additional training to do the job, and if you need stronger theory, the feds give great education benefits. A B.S. in mathematics will definitely get you looked at if you've got a decent GPA or work history. Look at nsa.gov for job postings under mathematics and cryptanalysis; if you've got any programming background as well, they'll want you.
Yeah, but which infinity? There's a lot of them.
It's a small world and it smells funny; I'd buy another if it wasn't for the money; Take back what I paid (SoM)
Move to a better school district. She won't have "criminals" (not my word!) in her class. She will have brighter, more educated, and well-behaved children. That will probably improve the administration situation as well. I would say just "teach" in a better school district, but the sooner you make the move yourself to a better district, the better... since raising kids in a bad school area gets progressively worse as the kids get older.
And don't give me any crap about how I must be a mean conservative... most of the white liberals who work and live in/near Berkeley, CA refuse to send their kids to the neighborhood government schools...
Right, but she's already burnt out on working with flaming assholes.
I've heard that the NSA is the biggest employer of mathematicians in the country. I'm sure they don't have much trouble finding work for them.
We hope your rules and wisdom choke you / Now we are one in everlasting peace
There's good money in it, assuming you can get motivation out of making the already absurdly wealthy incrementally richer. I spent time at a hedge fund; paid better than any job I've had before or since, but it was really hard to go to work every morning, because I felt no sense of accomplishment. I just felt like I was squandering my education skimming off the work of others (see High Frequency Trading, the entire speculative commodity futures market, etc.).
The few people who benefited from my work (besides myself) were already so wealthy (the minimum net worth requirements are ridiculous) that every single one of them could stick their money in a savings account and spend it at a rate of $200K a year for the rest of their life with no risk of going broke. Hard to get excited by the prospect of letting them spend $300K a year...
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In many states you do. And in this case, the summary notes that she has her master's in education.
In nearly all states, all you need is a generic bachelor's degree to teach in primary or secondary levels as a prerequisite for getting a teaching credential.
Of course, there is an additional requirement of verification of subject matter competence. This might be satisfied with a master's degree in the subject matter specific to their teaching credential, but in nearly all states it can also be satisfied by enrollment in a teacher-subject certificate program at a community college, or by just taking (and passing) a state administered teacher-subject exam. Although many teachers have master's degrees and higher (because of union contracts, higher degrees affords them a higher pay grade), some (like the teacher mentioned in the summary) have that master's degree in education, and not the subject matter of their teaching credential.
Also, for some hard to fill positions like math and science teachers, some districts even can waive the subject matter competence requirement if the bachelor degree happens to be in the subject matter. The teacher can be granted a temporary emergency credential, which allows the teacher to teach and gives the teacher a few years to pass the subject exam (w/o requiring any more courses). Sometime this emergency credential can be extended nearly indefinetly. I'm not saying this is the case with the teacher mentioned in the summary, just that it's quite possible to have a teacher just have a bachelor's degree in math and teach math w/o any other qualifications.
I had a great math teacher in high school.
15 years later, it was kind of a blast from the past to walk into the employee cafeteria and encounter my high school math teacher, now a software developer for the same corporation.
Why did your co-dependent become a teacher for?
You can tell her that the first year of teaching will be hell, and that it will get better the following year. No need to lie. She spent a lot of time and money to become a teacher, have her try one more year before she joins up in a JET program.
If her school is a Title 1 school, she may be eligable for a PELL Grant. And she can go an get her Adminstrative Credential.
This is not flamebait. I am a private school teacher so I say this with honest clarity. Some public school administrators are largely a joke. I am currently getting my master's degree in education administration and I hear horror stories day in and day out from classmates that work in the public system. Granted, I live in New Orleans so our public system is a dysfunctional mess. However, across the nation the legislative mandates that any public school teacher have to deal with are contradictory at best and truly insane at the worst. So ditch the public system. Private schools tend to be run more like companies and lousy administrators don't last. Firing teachers is a breeze... in fact, you're simply not rehired. To work in a private school you have far less legal protections but you have students and administrators that truly care, supportive parents (not always) and colleagues that are largely pros. (in the case of a good private school, much like in the case of a good company) So instead of bailing on the profession, bail on the bad school. Also, to be fair, there are thousands upon thousands of EXCELLENT public schools out there and perhaps your wife should look at other options in the area. Often times a different district or parish (counties for everyone else) will have a very different system. But really, don't give up on the dream of teaching. Teaching provides far more than can be measured and on my deathbed I will take a massive amount of satisfaction to the grave with me. Difference makers take it with them. Moneymakers may or may not be able to do the same.
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To teach an university now days more or less requires a PhD if you want to make a career of it. A one off course that pays next to nothing sure, even a Bachelors can teach that if you have enough experience. But one thing you definitely do not want to do right now is teach at a university as just a full time lecturer position (non tenured). Because you're constantly one year away from having your job taken away, regardless of your performance.
When push comes to shove tenured faculty have to be retained, which is part of tenure (and they do a lot more than just teach), and lecturers can get cut. When they get the budget for a full time tenured position to fill that spot you don't qualify. All ways around it's a bad job to have.
You could always try and teach math at a community college, but there you run the risk of being overqualified, and they will happily replace you with someone else.
Teaching has all the right time off, it's hard to convey just how valuable that is.
Even if you have to work at home, you can pick up your kid at 3, no babysitting, and work at home. No babysitting on march break, that extra week at christmas, or the two months in the summer etc. Those costs add up fast if you're in the private sector.
Then there are pension benefits. As in: you actually have a real pension. Usually they are defined benefit, meaning you will know how much you are going to get when you retire, and can plan accordingly (which is a huge stress reliever as you get older) and they are usually overall good plans.
Tutoring is a decent gig if you can't get a teaching job. Not the other way around.
Anyone who calls kids criminals should be kept far away from kids.
Excuse me? They assault each other and the teacher. My brother was teaching high school in DC and one day a student grabbed his wallet right in class and tried to run. Fortunately my brother was ex-military and knew what to do, but seriously, WTF??? Yes indeed, they are criminals.
Where do you imagine criminals come from? Do you think people suddenly turn criminal at age 18, and couldn't possibly be evil fuckers prior to adulthood? Heck, some asshole stabbed me in the 3rd or 4th grade and I still have the scar 3 decades later. In case you can't figure it out, that would be an assault with a weapon.
It's mightly sick that during childhood the decent people are forced to be in the presense of rotten people. Criminals don't come from thin air. They are essentially sitting in every classroom, except that they haven't yet been arrested because the authorities ignore criminal behavior in children. Remember, I still have that scar.
Same field, but is in some aspects better. Actuaries get high marks in job satasification. Good pay (not as good as quants, but....), easier to get into, good life / work balance, no insane presure, etc. Plus, as an added bonus, you can tell the exact time when somebody will die - but you can only use this power once. On the downside, you make accountants look sexy.
I'm not sure the "My wife looks good enough to be a prostitute" is the best argument to make.
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Sigh... What part of my post did you read as "I wasn't getting paid enough"? I already said, I was paid quite nicely there. But no amount of money can help when the problem is wanting to do more. Designing software used by thousands of people, supporting some noble goal, whatever. Giving those with lots of money even more money isn't motivating no matter how much they pay you to do it.
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I teach English in a Japanese high school. In my opinion, the teaching aspect of the job is orders of magnitude more difficult than the English aspect of the job.
The problem is not mastery of the subject. It's just not required. The problem is that most teachers do not know anything about how the mind works. I have met scores of ESL/EFL teachers. I can count the number who had ever heard anything about language acquisition theory on one hand. With respect to memory, I have *never* met a teacher who has ever read anything about the forgetting curve, the spacing effect, interleaving, or *anything* about memory discovered in the last 40 years. Applying these concepts to the classroom? Forget about it. It's not even on the radar. And that's not to mention the huge challenge of dealing with the psychology of motivating random groups of (especially young) people.
I will say that in my opinion, it *is* enough to know how to teach and to have a passion for teaching. But I've met a rare few people who fit the bill. Standing up in front of the students and cajoling them through the textbook is *not* "knowing how to teach".
To bring my rant somewhat on topic (although I doubt that the OP will ever read this deeply), I will lay odds that his wife's problems only *appear* to be with her colleagues/superiors. Teaching is hard beyond most people's definition of the word "hard". This bright eyed, bushy tailed, young person thinks that they can teach. But the truth is almost certainly that they suck nearly as badly as all the people around them that they are complaining about.
The key to moving past this point is to ignore the incompetence of others so as to be able to fully concentrate on your own failings. This problem is so difficult that if you allow yourself to get distracted by the circus going on around you that you will never move forward.
With an MS, you can teach at a community college. A lot of the students there are really trying to learn. A lot of them are among the smartest you could hope for (my roommate 23 years ago was a computer engineer who graduated near the top of his class at VPI... who did 2 years at a community college, and then 2 years at VPI. Now he has a PhD.)
Arguably the job teaching at a community college is better than that at a 4 year institution, especially if you use your time for such things as textbook / study guide creation.
You write the handwritten pages and sketches, and let the publishing company pay for a person to do the compositing / typing / proofing / photoready copy, and you can do quite well.
Correct Horse Battery Staple: 72 bits of entropy. Enter "Correct H" into google. When it generates the phrase, that's
The argument that private schools are harming society by skimming the cream from public schools is a smoke screen. Private schools probably do undermine the kind of society that public school bureaucrats want to construct by removing pupils from their control, but that's hardly the same thing.