Decatur Metro » Agnes Scott Masters Degree

Agnes Scott Faculty Vote to Discontinue Masters in Teaching Degree

Decatur Metro | May 21, 2010

In a note to alumnae yesterday, Agnes Scott College President Elizabeth Kiss announced that the college’s faculty had recently voted to discontinue the Masters of Arts in Teaching degree at the end of the 2010-2011 school year and “focus exclusively on our undergraduate minor in educational studies, established in 2008″.

In her letter, Kiss notes that while the program has been around since 1992, and the quality of the program remains “superb”, its viability has been influenced by the following factors:

Changes in the teacher certification process, especially Georgia’s decision to authorize quick routes to certification through the Teacher Alternative Preparation Program (TAPP), making full-time M.A.T. programs less appealing and affordable;
Increasing competition from new, less expensive online programs;
Elimination of the Georgia HOPE Teacher Scholarship Loan Program in the state budget, which up until this year provided all of our Georgia M.A.T. students nearly $10,000 in forgivable loans;
Continuing cuts in state and local funding for education, making it more difficult for Agnes Scott to place M.A.T. graduates who are seeking teaching positions.

Kiss closes by stating that Agnes Scott remains committed to educating future teachers, and is looking at future partnerships for undergraduates between colleges and continuing projects like the Fugees Academic Boot Camp for refugee children.