Teacher Education and Professional Development, Specific Levels and Methods at Saint Ambrose University

Saint Ambrose's education program produces starting salaries nearly $1,600 below Iowa's median for teaching programs, placing it in just the 40th percentile statewide. That gap matters when you're choosing between 27 in-state options—compare this to Iowa State or University of Iowa, where education graduates start around $45,000. The 6% earnings bump over four years keeps pace with modest teacher salary schedules, but you're beginning from a lower baseline than most Iowa programs offer.

The debt picture offers a silver lining: at $28,000, it's close to both state and national medians, and the 0.68 debt-to-earnings ratio means your child would owe about eight months of their first-year salary. For a profession with standardized pay scales and reliable employment, that's manageable. However, when nearby programs deliver $4,000-7,000 higher starting salaries for similar debt loads, those earnings differences compound across a 30-year teaching career.

If Saint Ambrose is the right fit for other reasons—campus culture, specific program features—this won't derail a teaching career. But strictly as a financial decision for an Iowa teaching credential, stronger options exist at comparable tuition levels. The top five Iowa programs all outperform this one by at least $2,000 annually, which translates to meaningful breathing room on a teacher's budget.