Education Administrators usually serve in educational management positions, mostly as principals or superintendents. To be successful as an administrator, you must have great communication and leadership skills. Your studies in this major will expose you to the fundamentals of management, and you’ll learn how to mobilize resources, supervise personnel, and handle school finance and law. You’ll learn the basics of organizational change, and you’ll study international perspectives on education. Computer applications are becoming more and more important to schools, and this major will expose you to many of them. Besides teaching you how to be a good leader, a major in Education Administration will also teach you about the many factors that impact education—factors such as economics and politics. You’ll share ideas and perspectives with other administrators to expand your conceptions of education. If you’re considering this major, you should have a strong desire to serve and an even stronger vision of what the future of education should be—and the practical ideas to help take it there. Education Administration programs are generally offered as master’s programs, where students have been teachers for some period of time and need an administrative degree to move further in their careers or turn them in a new direction.

Preparation

Communication skills are vital to any administration major, so make an effort to take classes in English, languages, writing, and the rest of the humanities. Take speech. Computer skills are also important, so take computer science classes if they’re offered in your school. As an administrator, you’re responsible for the bottom line, so take as much math as you can. And learn how to type.