Although the starting salary differential was significant, the teacher gets a tremendous amount of time offz. And the engineer has liability as a PE. What is the teacher's liability if they don't teach well? None.
I don't think it is salary. I did some substitute teaching for the head of the math dept at my high school when I was in college. It was challenging for a week, and interesting. Nothing I could do for a lifetime. Teaching the same stuff year in and year out is not appealing to a lot of people. You have to really want to teach and the great benefits that come with it. Job security (unless you sleep with our students), lots of time off. And once you set your classes, you can keep those year after year with minor modifications.
Combining the benefits, the job security and the time off, there are a lot of women who choose teaching. Now what we need to do is get more women interested in math and science. I thought that is where the big problem laid. When I was in engineering, only 4% of the class was female. Now I really like math and science, didn't like engineering since I don't like noisey, mechanical things. (yes, I did civil -- but took too long to make good money in civil) but I wouldn't go into teaching because the job doesn't suit me. And you cannot change that aspect for people who are good in math and science. And I don't see the job paying 200K with all the job security it offers.
Ren
