<p>^ That’s true. The University of Chicago has a similar program, but it takes 5 years to complete. (Harvard’s may, too.)</p>
<p>Here’s pretty much where things stand: </p>
<p>– The kind of students who get admitted to elite colleges generally do not have as their career goal being teachers below the college level. </p>
<p>– Notwithstanding that, a number of them do wind up teaching, either as a career, a gap period before graduate school, or a day job to support creative work. When they do that, they generally either teach in private schools that do not require credentialling, or they use alternative credentialling programs, such as Teach For America or The New Teacher Project, that allow them to earn their credential while they are teaching. Some come to teaching later. My mother dropped out of law school to be a private school teacher, and wound up getting an Education PhD 35 years later. I had a college and law school classmate who became a high school teacher after seven years in corporate law firms.</p>
<p>– The value of all of the various programs for training teachers is in dispute. Non-Education-School university faculty and administrators often do not have high regard for their Ed School counterparts, and the Ed School world is more than a little insular and self-regarding. Everyone agrees that teaching is a skill unto itself, and everyone agrees that a “good” teacher without substantive knowledge to impart is not very effective. Not everyone agrees that traditional Ed programs do a good job of producing effective teachers, and not everyone agrees that the alternative programs do any better.</p>