Teacher Education and Professional Development, Specific Subject Areas at Reinhardt University

Reinhardt's education program comes with a silver lining that deserves recognition: graduates carry just $30,000 in debt, landing in the 5th percentile nationally—meaning 95% of similar programs saddle students with more debt. For a field notorious for high debt loads relative to teacher salaries, this is a genuine advantage.

The earnings side tells a more sobering story. At $40,566, first-year teachers from this program earn roughly $3,000 less than Georgia's median for education programs and trail in-state options like Abraham Baldwin Agricultural College ($50,429) and Kennesaw State ($45,243) by even wider margins. The debt-to-earnings ratio of 0.74 is manageable—you'd expect to earn back the debt in about nine months of gross pay—but those higher-earning alternatives could accelerate financial stability considerably.

The critical caveat: this data comes from a very small sample of recent graduates, so a few outliers could skew the picture significantly. If your child is considering Reinhardt for reasons like proximity to home or the close-knit campus environment (it serves a substantial number of Pell-eligible students), the low debt burden makes this workable. But if you're choosing purely on career outcomes, Georgia offers several public universities where education majors earn $3,000-$10,000 more annually right out of the gate—a difference that compounds substantially over a teaching career.