The Masters in Adult Education degree allows you to teach students who have already been through the education and are returning later in life to add to their skills. Bear in mind this is different from a Masters in Higher Education, which will prepare you to teach at universities. You may end up teaching at a university with a Masters in Adult Education, but not necessarily. Community colleges and other non-university tertiary education providers have a demand for professional adult educators in a variety of teaching roles.

The Best Masters in Adult Education Programs

Although the big Ivy League schools aren’t rushing to start offering a specific Adult Education Masters, there are many fine graduate schools around the country that allow you to specialize in this field. Here are some of the better choices available for the future Masters of Adult Education student.

Northwestern State University of Louisiana is a good school to look into if adult education is your choice of career path. No only will you get a great education and a valuable degree from this school, you won’t have to pay an arm and a leg for it – Northwestern offers some of the most affordable Masters in Education programs in the US. In addition to its affordability, the program is popular with students. It’s a completely online Masters program.

The University of Georgia also has a Masters of Education program with a focus on adult education – the philosophy of the course is built on the concept of learning and intellectual growth as a lifelong practice. This program is deliberately broad to give you the widest array of job options after you graduate – handy, since it can be hard for an adult educator to anticipate exactly what sectors of the job market will have demand for adult education skills at any given time.

In Canada, St Francis Xavier University is one of the best options available for a Masters in Adult Ed. Again, this program is broad to so that people from a wide range of backgrounds can find value in it.

Online Masters in Adult Education

Penn State Online has one of the best online Masters in Adult Education. Penn State has recognized the increasing demand for adult education teachers, as jobs become increasingly difficult to get and many people find a high school education or Bachelor’s degree simply doesn’t cut it anymore. More and more people are seek to expand their skillsets later in life, either to advance in their current career or switch to a new one. Penn State’s Masters program will allow you to help them do that by teaching them the extra knowledge and skills they need to get ahead.

Capella University has a similar program designed to give you the ability to help others improve their employment prospects later in life. Capella’s Adult Education Masters is a well-rounded program that teaches you the key fundamentals of educating people who may have been out of the school system for some time.

Troy University Online also has a quality program. This program covers topics like the psychology of adult learners, and how to integrate computer technology into adult education. The only drawback of the Troy program is that’s a non-certification course. So while it will give you the skills and knowledge to be a competent teacher, in theory, it doesn’t actually leave you with the legal credentials you need to take a professional teaching job.

As mentioned above, the Northwestern State University degree is also completely online, with no in-person attendance requirements to graduate.

Masters in Adult Education Jobs

As I already touched on, opportunities for Masters in Adult Education grads are growing as more and more people seek later-life education in order to upskill or change careers. Many of these jobs exist teaching evening classes at community colleges. You can also go into teaching reading and writing skills to adults – many adults suffer from reading problems, like dyslexia, which have never been recognized because these problems have not been widely understood in the school system until relatively recently. Having a masters in adult education and teaching these kinds of people can give them a second lease on life, opening up new job possibilities for them.