What Can You Do With An Early Childhood Education Degree?

An ear­ly child­hood edu­ca­tion degree will give you access to a wealth of vital careers that shape young minds in their ear­li­est moments of sen­tience. Mod­ern research shows that stu­dents who attend pre‑K form imper­a­tive emo­tion­al, aca­d­e­m­ic, and social skills that stu­dents who don’t sta­tis­ti­cal­ly lack oth­er­wise. This research has led to a pre‑K for all move­ments across Amer­i­ca, with New York City lead­ing the way. In 2017, NYC’s May­or Bill de Bla­sio unveiled a uni­ver­sal pre‑K pro­gram, after slow­ly devel­op­ing it from 2015 onward. With an ear­ly child­hood edu­ca­tion degree, you’d be qual­i­fied to live and work in NYC and all across the coun­try, giv­ing young chil­dren vital edu­ca­tion and ser­vices that will stay with them for the rest of their lives.

If you want to work teach­ing young chil­dren in any capac­i­ty, you’ll want to earn an ear­ly child­hood edu­ca­tion degree. At Bachelor’s Degree Cen­ter, we’ve com­piled some of the best teach­ing degrees avail­able, includ­ing pro­grams specif­i­cal­ly tar­get­ing ear­ly child­hood edu­ca­tion. It’s fair­ly com­mon to take a gen­er­al teach­ing degree for your under­grad­u­ate and then spe­cial­ize in ear­ly child­hood edu­ca­tion for your Master’s, but your path is up to you. Our Top 10 Edu­ca­tion Degree Pro­grams will give you a leg up on find­ing what­ev­er edu­ca­tion degree pro­gram suits you best. Schools made our rank­ing based on their:

• School rep­u­ta­tion
• Cost of attendance
• Deliv­ery Format
• Num­ber of edu­ca­tion programs
• NCATE accred­i­ta­tion, and more.

Our Top 10 Edu­ca­tion Degree Pro­grams rank­ing fea­tures an excel­lent B.S. pro­gram in Ear­ly Child­hood Edu­ca­tion from Van­der­bilt Uni­ver­si­ty that you should imme­di­ate­ly take a look at if you’re inter­est­ed in the field.

The course­work and edu­ca­tion­al require­ments will usu­al­ly include the fun­da­men­tals nec­es­sary for licen­sure, but you will also learn things like:

Social work

Spe­cial needs teaching

Devel­op­ing les­son plans

You may also have to do stu­dent teach­ing or work as a teacher’s aide for hands-on expe­ri­ence in ear­ly child­hood edu­ca­tion jobs. Your career goals may also lead you to cer­tifi­cate pro­grams where you can fur­ther spe­cial­ize. The Bureau of Labor Sta­tis­tics shows a lot of need for ECE experts in the future.

So what can you do with an early childhood education degree?

Some of the most com­mon careers for peo­ple with ear­ly child­hood edu­ca­tion degrees include:

• Becom­ing a preschool teacher or ele­men­tary school teacher
• Run­ning a Child­care Cen­ter, child devel­op­ment cen­ter, head­start pro­grams, or day­care, either as a child­care cen­ter direc­tor or in anoth­er admin­is­tra­tive position.
• Work­ing as a home-based ser­vice provider to young chil­dren. You might pro­vide coun­sel­ing, spe­cif­ic skill-build­ing, or oth­er ser­vices that tar­get the needs of indi­vid­ual children.
• Becom­ing a Fam­i­ly Sup­port Spe­cial­ist, help­ing fam­i­lies deal with health, emo­tion­al, hous­ing or oth­er prob­lems by pro­vid­ing sup­port and con­nect­ing them to com­mu­ni­ty services.
• Work­ing as a con­sul­tant to pub­lic or pri­vate orga­ni­za­tions to help them make informed deci­sions about child care.
• Research­ing for pub­lic or pri­vate orga­ni­za­tions on a range of issues relat­ed to ear­ly child­hood education.

Child­care work­ers with the right cre­den­tial can be in high demand. A day­care cen­ter for chil­dren with dis­abil­i­ties, for instance, needs a high­er lev­el of spe­cial edu­ca­tion teacher. Ear­ly child­hood edu­ca­tion pro­grams can also pre­pare stu­dents for work in a spe­cial­ized learn­ing envi­ron­ment, like a pri­vate school kinder­garten teacher, where they can make a high­er aver­age salary.

Your child­hood devel­op­ment career path may take a lot of forms. You might not want to work direct­ly in ear­ly child­hood edu­ca­tion even­tu­al­ly. For­tu­nate­ly, an ear­ly child­hood edu­ca­tion can pre­pare you for oth­er careers, con­sid­er­ing your skills. Oth­er poten­tial career options for peo­ple with ear­ly child­hood edu­ca­tion degrees include:

• Work­ing as a writer.
• Work­ing at a muse­um, or in muse­um education.
• Becom­ing an entre­pre­neur who dis­rupts the cur­rent edu­ca­tion­al system.
• Work­ing in sales.

You may also take fur­ther high­er edu­ca­tion or a high­er lev­el of edu­ca­tion to become a school coun­selor, social work­er, or go into school administration.

Now that you have a sense of what you can do with an ear­ly child­hood edu­ca­tion degree, go to our rank­ing of the Top 10 Edu­ca­tion Degree Pro­grams to find the best on-cam­pus, tra­di­tion­al pro­grams in edu­ca­tion available.

Relat­ed:

25 Best Ear­ly Child­hood Edu­ca­tion Bachelor’s Programs

15 Best Ear­ly Child­hood Edu­ca­tion Degree Online Bachelor’s Programs

10 Fastest Online Ear­ly Child­hood Edu­ca­tion Degree Bachelor’s Programs

10 Most Afford­able Ear­ly Child­hood Edu­ca­tion Degree Online Bachelor’s

Top 10 Online Bach­e­lor of Edu­ca­tion Degree Programs

15 Best Online Train­ing and Devel­op­ment Programs