Quinnipiac University students pursuing a Masters in Teaching in the School of Education receive reduced tuition and internship placement help to ensure full experience, regardless of their Bachelor’s degree.
While the help that the university offers to its graduate students with internship placements has been a staple of the program, the newer addition is the aforementioned tuition offset.
“The idea is simply that in order to become a highly qualified teacher, you really need to experience the full arc of the calendar year in school,” said Anne Dichele, dean of the School of Education. “The school district who hires the resident pays Quinnipiac a stipend amount of money to be utilized as the offsetted tuition.”
For the last three years, the degree is also a registered apprenticeship program through the Department of Labor, only one of the 14 in the state.
“RA Programs enable and energize more employers to participate and provide them access to larger talent pools that have been trained for entry-level to management positions, thereby meeting industry demands and reducing unemployment rates across the country,” according to its website.
In order to be certified, according to Connecticut Education, all candidates admitted must hold a valid Connecticut teaching certificate and a minimum cumulative grade of B- for all undergraduate courses.
Quinnipiac’s Masters in Teaching is usually a 15-month long program, shortened if a student is enrolled in the 4+1 program to only three semesters, instead of five.
The school partners with about 20 different school districts in Connecticut and ensures every single placement of every student, providing in return workshops on campus and pay for those teachers that work as mentors.
Currently, the program has a 98% successful job placement rate.
“We want the highest quality experience for our students,” Dichele said. “It’s not a formal vetting but we really want to be sure that if we’re placing students in a district, that they are getting a year of really quality support.”
The tuition offset that the students receive by being enrolled in this internship/residency part of the graduate program is a set stipend that the school sets each year, and is based on the program the students are in, as the university offers MAT in Secondary, Elementary and Special Education.
These programs typically run around 45-52 credits for completion.
“A typical master’s degree, if you think of it in terms of cost of credit and number of credits, usually it’s around $30,000,” Dichele said. “Right now the amount of tuition offset is at $15,000.”
Credits for these programs run from anywhere from around $750 to $1,000, so the $15,000 offset runs as high as 50% of the entire tuition, excluding any additional costs.
Another bonus that comes from the internship is that quite a number of students end up with permanent placements following their graduate year.
“The schools actually hire them, they’re interviewed by the school district and then they will call us back and say ‘We want this person,’” Dichele said. “I can tell you that many of our residents tend to be hired.”
Despite popular belief, the +1 year is open to students with any Bachelor’s degree, as long as they have the desire to teach.
“If you’re interested in becoming a teacher, particularly in the STEM fields, which we desperately need out in the high school, the opportunity to get your master’s degree with almost no tuition, a year of experience, it’s right there for you,” Dichele said. “If you’re not sure what you want to do after graduation, now’s the time to come and talk to us, because you could walk right into this program in July, be done the following September and be in your own classroom.”
Students in this program typically attend courses at Quinnipiac at night, two or three times per week depending on what certificate they are going for and work in their own classroom for the full week.
