Abstract
To inform this study, literature was reviewed in the areas of teacher satisfaction and salary; student achievement and performance pay; teacher attrition and retention; teacher unions and collective bargaining; and teacher recruitment. Most notably was the finding of Zhang, Verstegen and Kim (2008), that salary is one of the strongest predictors of teacher satisfaction, as well as Grissom and Strunk’s (2012) conclusion that higher teacher salaries tied to achievement correlated strongly with better student achievement. This study focused on the impact of teacher salary levels on competitive undergraduate students’ perceptions of entering the teaching profession. This study employed two instruments. The first was a survey that was electronically distributed to juniors and seniors attending the prestigious University of California. The surveys consisted of multiple choice questions on the participants’ perceptions of entering the teaching profession and yielded a sample size of 1,362. The second instrument was interviews with six University of California juniors and seniors that were analyzed thematically. The principle finding was that the undergraduate students resoundingly determined teacher salary to be the dominant factor in deterring them from the teaching profession. These students overwhelmingly expressed that teacher salaries are perceived to be extremely lower than other professions. Additionally, the students found that teaching is not lucrative, rewarding, or prestigious. While these students strongly determined that teachers enjoy a high or extremely high level of job satisfaction, a strong majority of the undergraduates will not even consider a teaching career. The chief reason for this, as shown by the data, was their belief that teachers are significantly underpaid. Most considerable for policy makers was that when just assessing the perceptions of undergraduates who indicated that they would consider a teaching career, the effect of a low salary as a prohibitive factor increased substantially. That is, the undergraduate students most likely to consider teaching are the ones for whom low teacher salaries serves most significantly as a deterrent. The primary recommendations would be in addressing the reasons why teacher salaries are persistently low and how higher teacher salaries would improve teacher recruitment and quality.