Special Education Doctoral Programs: A 10-Year Comparison of the Suppliers of Leadership Personnel

The first article in this special issue is about the doctoral programs, the suppliers of new doctoral graduates in special education. It focuses on one component of a larger effort, the Special Education Faculty Needs Assessment (SEFNA) project, which investigated many aspects of the supply of new doctoral graduates as well as the demand for new college and university faculty members. Here, the authors present information about the characteristics of the nation’s doctoral programs and their capacity to produce a sufficient supply of teacher educators, faculty for doctoral-granting universities, school leaders, federal and state officials, policy makers, researchers, and advocates. In the 10-year period since The Faculty Shortage Study (Smith, Pion, Tyler, Sindelar, & Rosenberg, 2001) was completed, substantial improvement in the capacity of doctoral programs (i.e., number and size) and the supply (i.e., number of graduates produced) occurred. Federal and stakeholder actions contributed greatly to progress made in addressing the special education faculty shortage identified in the previous study. These programs are at substantial risk of being understaffed in the upcoming years due to overwhelming attrition due to faculty retirements, which will impact the supply chain across the field of special education.