FlightWay / Careers / English Language and Literature Teachers, Postsecondary
Education
English Language and Literature Teachers, Postsecondary
Teach courses in English language and literature, including linguistics and comparative literature.
- Sector: Education
- Preparation: Zone 5 — extensive preparation needed
- O*NET code: 25-1123.00
What you'll actually do
The activities O*NET rates highest for this occupation, most important first. Numbers are out of 100.
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Training and Teaching Others
central to the job — rated 93/100 for importance.
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Establishing and Maintaining Interpersonal Relationships
central to the job — rated 89/100 for importance.
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Interpreting the Meaning of Information for Others
central to the job — rated 88/100 for importance.
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Communicating with Supervisors, Peers, or Subordinates
central to the job — rated 88/100 for importance.
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Thinking Creatively
central to the job — rated 87/100 for importance.
-
Making Decisions and Solving Problems
central to the job — rated 85/100 for importance.
Teach courses in English language and literature, including linguistics and comparative literature. Includes both teachers primarily engaged in teaching and those who do a combination of teaching and research.
What it takes
Two numbers per line: the level the work expects, and how important it is to doing the job well. Both are O*NET ratings, already on a 0–100 scale.
Skills
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Reading Comprehension
Needed at a high level (71/100), and rated 94/100 for importance.
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Instructing
Needed at a high level (63/100), and rated 91/100 for importance.
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Writing
Needed at a high level (70/100), and rated 81/100 for importance.
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Speaking
Needed at a high level (68/100), and rated 78/100 for importance.
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Learning Strategies
Needed at a high level (71/100), and rated 75/100 for importance.
Knowledge
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English Language
Needed at expert level (92/100), and rated 93/100 for importance.
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Education and Training
Needed at expert level (82/100), and rated 87/100 for importance.
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Communications and Media
Needed at a high level (72/100), and rated 77/100 for importance.
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History and Archeology
Needed at a high level (67/100), and rated 69/100 for importance.
Abilities
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Written Comprehension
Needed at a high level (71/100), and rated 97/100 for importance.
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Oral Expression
Needed at a high level (71/100), and rated 91/100 for importance.
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Oral Comprehension
Needed at a high level (71/100), and rated 81/100 for importance.
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Written Expression
Needed at a high level (71/100), and rated 81/100 for importance.
How people get in
O*NET places this occupation in Zone 5 — extensive preparation needed. That is a statement about what employers typically require, not a rule about you.
Education
Graduate school — a master's, a PhD, an MD or a JD, depending on the field.
Experience
More than five years of related experience is common before the title is yours.
Training
This is a long runway. Start the prerequisites early or the timeline slips a year at a time.
What it pays
These are typical education compensation bands by employer tier — sector-level figures, not a measured salary for English Language and Literature Teachers, Postsecondary specifically. Treat them as the shape of the market, then check a real posting for the number.
Top University Admin
$90k – $180k
Public School Districts
$55k – $85k
Charter & Private Schools
$45k – $75k
How the work tends to run
Each line below is read off a single O*NET activity rating for this occupation — named, so you can disagree with it.
- Most of the day happens at a screen.From “Working with Computers”
- Long-running relationships carry the work; the same people come back.From “Establishing and Maintaining Interpersonal Relationships”
- You own decisions rather than execute someone else’s.From “Making Decisions and Solving Problems”
- There is real room to invent — the answer is not in a manual.From “Thinking Creatively”
How FlightWay scores your fit against this
No black box. Here is the whole method, factor by factor.
- 1. You answer a short quiz
- Your answers build a profile across the same 161 O*NET dimensions this page is describing — skills, knowledge, abilities and work activities. Same axes, so the comparison is like-for-like.
- 2. We correlate the two profiles
- Fit is a mean-centered cosine — a correlation between the SHAPE of your profile and the shape of English Language and Literature Teachers, Postsecondary. Centering matters: raw similarity between any two occupations sits at 0.70–0.85 because all work shares a common profile, so without it every career would look like a match.
- 3. The number you see is personality fit only
- "Would I want this work" and "am I ready for this work" are different questions, and averaging them answers neither. So readiness — what your résumé, coursework and projects prove — is scored separately and shown next to fit, never blended into it.
- 4. Every factor is visible
- You can open any match and see which dimensions pushed it up and which pulled it down. If you disagree with the number, you can see exactly where it came from.
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See your fit for English Language and Literature Teachers, Postsecondary
Ten questions, about 90 seconds. You get your match against English Language and Literature Teachers, Postsecondary and 782+ other real careers — with the reasoning shown.
Take the quiz Open in FlightWayOccupational data on this page comes from the O*NET 30.3 Database, published by the U.S. Department of Labor, Employment and Training Administration (USDOL/ETA). O*NET is a registered trademark of USDOL/ETA. FlightWay is not endorsed by, and USDOL/ETA is not responsible for, anything built on that data — see our terms. What is ours is the comparison, the score and the plan.