13.03 Curriculum and Instruction · SOC 25-9031
⚠⚠⚠ One job title, two federal occupations pulling in opposite directions. Instructional coordinator: $77,440, 60% master's, growing 1–2%. Training and development specialist: $69,280, 78% bachelor's, twice the jobs, twice the openings, growing much faster than average. ⚠⚠ And you cannot major in it — Florida's public institutions awarded 978 credentials in this field and SIX were bachelor's degrees.
| Role | SOC | 2025 median | Employed | Openings/yr | Growth 2024–34 | Entry |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Instructional coordinator — schools, districts, universities | 25-9031 | ✅ $77,440 | 232,600 | 21,900 | ⚠⚠ slower than average (1–2%) | ⚠ 60% master's |
| Training and development specialist — corporate | 13-1151 | $69,280 | ✅ 452,300 | ✅ 43,900 | ✅ much faster (7%+) | ✅ 78% bachelor's |
| Training and development manager | 11-3131 | ✅ $133,000 | 46,400 | 3,800 | faster (5–6%) | 71% bachelor's |
⚠⚠⚠ “Instructional designer” is a job title that sits across two federal occupations, and they point in opposite directions. The education-sector one pays $8,160 more and is barely growing; the corporate one is nearly twice the size, has twice the annual openings, grows much faster, and does not expect a master's.
⚠⚠ And the ceilings differ more than the entry points. The corporate ladder reaches $133,000 as a training and development manager — on a bachelor's for 71% of them. The education route's higher entry wage is not a higher ceiling.
⚠ So the first decision is not the degree. It is the sector, and it determines whether the master's is worth buying at all.
| Code | FL public institutions | Credentials | Bachelor's |
|---|---|---|---|
| Curriculum and Instruction (13.0301) | 10 | 762 | ⚠⚠ 0 |
| Educational/Instructional Technology (13.0501) | 6 | 216 | ⚠⚠ 6 |
⚠⚠⚠ 978 credentials, six bachelor's. 642 are master's, 148 research or professional doctorates, and 94 are postbaccalaureate or post-master's certificates. This is a field you enter after a first degree in something else, and that is the normal route rather than a compromise.
⚠⚠ Notice the 94 certificates. They are the cheap route for someone already holding a degree and working — a teacher, a trainer, a subject expert — and they are worth pricing against the master's before assuming the master's is necessary.
This is a choice path, so the question is which undergraduate subject helps. The most direct evidence is a 2019 survey of instructional designers working in higher education (Magruder, Arnold, Moore and Edwards, Online Learning Journal; 104 qualified respondents, margin of error ±9%):
| Finding | |
|---|---|
| Held a graduate degree | ✅ 88% |
| ⚠ Whose degree was in instructional design or educational technology | ⚠⚠ 49% |
| Experience from a higher education background | 97% |
| Working at public higher education institutions | 61% |
⚠⚠⚠ The degree matters; the subject largely does not. More than half of working instructional designers in higher education hold a graduate degree in something else.
⚠ Read the limits with the finding. 104 respondents, ±9%, 2017 data, UPCEA member institutions, higher education only. It is a small survey and it is the best direct evidence that exists — there is no LSAC or AAMC equivalent for this field, and a page that pretended otherwise would be inventing precision.
Nothing here is licensed. The professional body's own credential, ATD's CPTD, requires at least five years of talent development experience and 60 hours of professional development in the last five — a mid-career mark, not a way in.
⚠⚠⚠ So what an employer screens on is work you have actually built. That is unusual among the careers on this site and it has a practical consequence: the cheapest thing you can do for your employability is design something real — a course, a module, a job aid — and be able to explain the analysis behind it.
⚠ It also means the field is genuinely open to career changers in a way licensed professions are not. A teacher, a nurse educator, a technical writer or a subject expert with a portfolio competes with a master's graduate who has none.
EME2040 Introduction to Technology for Educators is carried by 33 Florida public institutions — more than any other course in the prefix, and taken by most Florida teaching students. The actual instructional design curriculum is graduate: 146 graduate EME course numbers against 132 undergraduate, and the design courses themselves — EME6405 Educational Web Design, EME6209 Digital Video, EME6346 Needs Analysis and Assessment — sit at 6000 level at three to five institutions each.
⚠ The one undergraduate exception worth taking is EME4673 Foundations of Instructional Design, at four institutions (St Petersburg College, UF, UNF, UWF). If your institution carries it, take it — it is the only undergraduate course in Florida that teaches the thing itself.
⚠⚠⚠ Decide the sector before the degree. Education wants a master's and is growing at 1–2%; corporate wants a bachelor's and a portfolio, has twice the openings, and tops out at $133,000. Buying a master's for a corporate job is optional; buying one for a university job mostly is not.
⚠⚠ Build a portfolio before you buy a credential. Design something real, document the analysis, and show it. In a field with no licence and no required major, this is the whole market signal.
⚠ Price the certificate against the master's. Florida awarded 94 postbaccalaureate and post-master's certificates in this field last year, and if you already hold a degree and a job, that is the efficient route.
⚠ Major in something you can teach from. The survey says more than half of working designers hold a graduate degree outside the field, so subject expertise plus design skill is a normal and competitive combination — and a common route in is being the person in a department who was already good at explaining things.
And if you are a teacher, you are already most of the way there. 33 Florida institutions teach EME2040, the programmes sit in colleges of education, and district instructional coaching is the standard first move.
A program is a field of study, one level above a degree — each page says which degrees it covers and which Florida institutions award them. ⚠ The count is institutions that awarded a credential in the field in 2023; it is not a promise that a school runs this exact degree, and it counts something different from the course-based list further down.
Programs worth knowing about if you are considering this career — ⚠ they do not lead to it. Each row says what it is and is not.
Careers filed under the same broad field in the federal classification (EDUCATION) — often they share early coursework, and each row says which group it is filed in. ⚠ Worth reading BEFORE you commit: switching between neighbours is cheap early and expensive late.
See every career in EDUCATION →
Selected, not exhaustive — the courses specific to this path plus the foundations it is built on. A course number does not identify a course in Florida: always check your own institution's catalog and take a syllabus to an adviser.
39 Florida public institutions teach courses on this path. The count is how many of the 15 listed courses each one carries — it shows where the path is best covered. It is not a statement that a school offers this as a degree; for that, check the institution’s own programme list.
Requirements change. These are the authorities that decide them — check them directly before committing to a route.
Last updated 23 September 2026.