In the
United States and
Canada, a
school of education (or
college of education;
ed school) is a division within a
university that is devoted to scholarship in the field of
education, which is an interdisciplinary branch of the
social sciences encompassing
sociology,
psychology,
linguistics,
economics,
political science,
public policy,
history, and others, all applied to the topic of
elementary,
secondary, and
post-secondary education. The U.S. has 1,206 schools, colleges and departments of education and they exist in 78% of all universities and colleges. According to the National Center for Education Statistics, 176,572 individuals were conferred masters' degrees in education by degree-granting institutions in the United States in 2006–2007. The number of master’s degrees conferred has grown immensely since the 1990s and accounts for one of the discipline areas that awards the highest number of master’s degrees in the United States.