A study by Sam Sims and Clare Routledge at University College London finds that although college students value jobs with social impact, extrinsic rewards—such as salary, working hours, and time off—are three to five times more influential in shaping job preferences, sometimes to the teaching profession’s disadvantage.
The researchers surveyed 871 undergraduates in the United Kingdom. They presented each student with ten pairs of hypothetical jobs, each job defined by a bundle of attributes including salary, working hours, flexibility, and social impact. Students selected the more attractive job in each pair. By randomizing these attributes, the researchers were able to isolate the independent effect of each factor on job choice.
The results suggest that students do care about doing good. On average, respondents were willing to sacrifice about £1,200 ($1,500) in annual salary for a role with greater social impact. A job described as having “significant” societal impact was 3 percentage points more likely to be selected than one with only “small” impact.
But extrinsic factors carried substantially more weight. The structure of teaching—particularly its long hours and lack of flexibility—reduced its appeal. Moving from a typical 40-hour workweek to the 52 hours teachers commonly report working decreased the likelihood of choosing that job by 15 percentage points, the largest negative effect in the study. Eliminating the option to work from home, flexibility in-school instruction doesn’t afford, reduced the probability by 9 percentage points.
Some features of teaching did increase its appeal. Raising the starting salary from that of a typical recent college graduate to that of a typical teacher—an 11 percent increase in the U.K.—made students 9 percentage points more likely to choose teaching. Offering 13 weeks of paid leave instead of the typical six weeks increased the likelihood by 11 percentage points. Retention bonuses similar to those offered in the U.K. increased job appeal by 6 to 12 percentage points. Taken together, these findings suggest that policies improving teacher pay, leave, and bonuses can meaningfully increase the profession’s appeal, particularly if prospective teachers know these benefits exist.
Sims and Routledge replicated the study with 1,242 undergraduates in the United States and found a similar pattern: extrinsic rewards drove job choice. Even among students who reported being “open to teaching,” extrinsic factors outweighed social impact.
Unlike in the U.K., starting salary and retention bonuses in the U.S. do not consistently exceed what a typical college graduate might earn in other professions, making it more difficult to leverage the researchers’ finding in the U.S.
The researchers note a limitation of the study: students were given complete information about hypothetical jobs, but in reality, many may not know about the full range of benefits teaching offers. Accordingly, they urge policymakers to rethink the recruitment of teachers—rather than focusing on the rewards of making a difference in students’ lives, as many teaching recruitment campaigns do, they should also highlight extrinsic rewards.