What Happens When You Want to Teach but Can’t Afford the Degree?
I met Marcus on a Tuesday afternoon during drop-in advising. He was sitting in a plastic chair outside my office, holding a student ID and a phone with a cracked case. He was twenty-six, worked nights at a warehouse, and had just passed his first education class. He wanted to teach middle school history. “I think I have to stop out,” he said. “My Pell grant ran out, and the next book is $120. I need that money for gas.”
That is the part of the teacher shortage that doesn’t make the news. Everyone says we need more people in classrooms, especially people who actually grew up in the neighborhoods they want to serve. But the path to a teaching license is full of small costs that add up: application fees, background checks, required tests, portfolio submissions. A lot of would-be teachers don’t leave because they stop caring about school. They leave because the money runs out somewhere between one required step and the next.
I told Marcus to wait before doing anything permanent. We sat down with his laptop and a paper cup of coffee that was mostly cream. He was ready to quit, but he wasn’t in a hurry. That turned out to be useful. In twenty minutes, we found four or five ways to keep him in the pipeline, none of them perfect, but all of them real.
The first was the TEACH Grant. It’s a federal grant for people who are willing to teach in a high-need field at a low-income school after they graduate. It can give about four thousand dollars a year toward tuition. Marcus had never heard of it because his financial aid letter didn’t mention it—you have to ask for it through your campus aid office. We read the fine print together. The service requirement is serious: four years of teaching within eight years after finishing your degree. If you don’t meet that, the grant turns back into a loan. I told him not to sign up unless he was sure about teaching in a Title I school. He thought about it for a minute and said, “I was counting on it.”
The second option came from a “grow your own” program. Many school districts, especially larger ones, work with community colleges to turn paraprofessionals and substitute teachers into fully licensed teachers. Marcus could work as a full-time para in a district that would pay for part of his coursework. In exchange, he’d commit to teaching there for a few years. It’s not a scholarship you can find on a search engine. You have to ask the district’s human resources office. We looked up his local district’s page, found the classified job openings, and saw a note about tuition reimbursement for instructional aides. He hadn’t considered applying because those jobs are posted under “classified,” not “teaching.”
The third thing was simpler: subbing. Marcus had enough credits to get an emergency substitute permit. That meant he could work during the day, set his own schedule, and be in classrooms while finishing his degree. The pay wasn’t amazing, but it was steadier than his warehouse shifts, and he could pick up work only when he didn’t have class. It would also give him actual experience to write about in later application essays. He didn’t know it was possible to sub with two years of college credit. It is, in many states.
I also asked about his required content-area test. The fee was around $140, and he had planned to put it on a credit card. But the company that runs the Praxis tests has a fee assistance program for low-income test takers. We checked the eligibility box, and he qualified. The cost dropped significantly. Then we looked at the textbook. The $120 book was the new edition, but the library had the previous one. His professor, when I emailed, was fine with putting a copy on reserve. Marcus still needed something to read during the free period, but he found an older paperback for twenty dollars online. It was a small win, but it bought him another semester.
None of these things were a magic fix. The semester after that, his car needed new tires, and he almost missed two weeks of classes. Another week, his work schedule changed without warning and he had to go back to campus twice as often. The barriers didn’t disappear. But they stopped being a wall.
There are more places to look than people think. The two major teacher unions, the National Education Association and the American Federation of Teachers, both list small scholarships for aspiring educators and their families. Some state education agencies run loan forgiveness programs for shortages in special education, bilingual education, or science. Some teaching programs build the cost of the edTPA into tuition, and some states cover it through a grant. It takes digging. It takes calling someone at the state capitol. But the help is not entirely hidden.
I have said this to many students since Marcus: before you drop out because of money, spend one hour searching a different way. Sit down with a counselor, an advisor, or, if you have one, a professor who has taught in public schools. Say, “I think I have to stop out, but I don’t want to.” That sentence changes things. It gives the person across the table permission to do more than nod.
Marcus didn’t get through college cleanly. He failed one semester after a family emergency and had to retake a class. He complained about every grant form, every verification letter. But last time I saw him was in the hallway at a middle school, wearing a lanyard and a sweatshirt with the school name on it. He was a building sub at that point, not yet a licensed teacher. He had a stack of hall passes in one hand and was telling a kid to stop running. The kid didn’t listen. Marcus just sighed and kept walking. He looked like a real teacher, the kind who knows that most problems don’t get solved the same day. He still had a long way to go. But he was no longer on his way out.
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