Careers in the Higher Education Sector
Careers in Higher Education
Staff, teaching, and research roles at colleges and universities can make for rewarding career paths for social sciences students. Whether investigating the frontiers of social research, providing instruction, supporting student living and learning, or advancing the ongoing business of an institution, students can find a wide variety of rewarding career paths in the higher education sector.
Teaching, Research, and Beyond
Universities and colleges employ a wide variety of full-time and ongoing staff. While many people presume that higher education employees are all ‘professors’, teaching and research staff are only one important part of a much wider working community.
Academic Teachers & Researchers
Universities, and often colleges, are typically designed around the academic faculty member, a full-time teacher and researcher who balances their time between classroom, research-based, and administrative duties. Additional types of university employers also support the teaching and research missions of the university, respectively, including contract instructors, researchers, laboratory managers, and more.
Institutional Staff
My sheer number, most of a university’s employees are not teachers or researchers. Universities and colleges are often complex institutions with all of the typical business and administrative needs of any large organization, such as human resources, finance, communications, and information technology services. In addition, many careers exist uniquely at institutions of higher education such as recruitment officers, financial aid teams, community engagement specialists, academic advisors, experiential learning support staff, and much, much more.
Related Occupational Categories
Whereas exploring careers by ‘sectors’ helps us to sort by employer type, industry, or general field of work, Economic and Social Development Canada’s ‘occupational’ categories tend to focus more on the duties and functions that people play in specific roles. Here are just a few of the occupation categories that may be relevant to this sector:
