ASU's Mary Lou Fulton Teachers College ranked 11th in nation

March 30, 2021
Erik Ketcherside

Arizona State University's Mary Lou Fulton Teachers College placed No. 11 among 277 institutions that responded to the survey conducted by U.S. News & World Report for its 2022 rankings of America’s graduate schools of education.

Among public universities, the college was ranked No. 4, ahead of the University of California-Berkeley, the University of Texas-Austin and the University of Virginia.

Mary Lou Fulton Teachers College continues to be one of the few colleges of education in the country that excels at both teacher preparation and world-class scholarly research. ASU reported an annual average of $74.7 million in funded research related to education, which ranked first among all institutions surveyed, ahead of the University of Wisconsin ($69 million), New York University ($63.3 million) and Harvard University ($60.3 million).

With 4,517 students enrolled in graduate degree programs in 2020, ASU reported the fourth-largest graduate enrollment among universities ranked in the survey and the second most among institutions ranked in the top 20.

“We’re proud to be both big and good,” said Carole Basile, dean of Mary Lou Fulton Teachers College. “It reflects our university’s commitment to combining access and excellence.”

The survey also identified the following Mary Lou Fulton Teachers College graduate programs as among the top in the country:

Elementary teacher education: 7.
Special education: 11.
Secondary teacher education: 12.
Curriculum and instruction: 14 .
Educational administration 14.
Education policy 15.

“The U.S. News & World Report ranking is one of many indications that we are maintaining a level of excellence in doing the things that graduate colleges of education have traditionally done,” Basile said. “We’re preparing teachers and principals, generating research that informs pedagogy and policy.

“Additionally, we’d like to expand the expectations of what a college of education should be and do,” Basile said. “We have a catalytic role to play in bringing people and ideas together so we can forge sustainable, systemic responses to our society's biggest education challenges. This past year made the importance of that role more evident than ever. The pandemic didn’t reveal new problems in our education system. But it certainly made the severity of our most daunting problems both morally and practically impossible to ignore.”

Basile points to Mary Lou Fulton Teachers College’s national leadership role in defining the Next Education Workforce as an example of the kind of work she thinks a great college of education can do. “We’re working with educators, school systems, researchers, policymakers, nonprofits, community organizations and others to think about how we can improve learning environments for both educators and learners.”