---
title: "Foreign Language and Literature Teacher, Postsecondary"
description: "Teach languages and literature courses in languages other than English. Includes teachers of American Sign Language (ASL). Includes both teachers…"
canonical: "https://nuecareer.com/careers/foreign-language-and-literature-teacher-postsecondary"
last-updated: "2026-10-09T10:57:55.138Z"
---

# Foreign Language and Literature Teacher, Postsecondary

**Category:** Educational Instruction and Library · **SOC code:** 25-1124 · **O\*NET-SOC code:** 25-1124.00

Teach languages and literature courses in languages other than English. Includes teachers of American Sign Language (ASL). Includes both teachers primarily engaged in teaching and those who do a combination of teaching and research.

Also advertised as: Assistant Professor; Associate Professor; Foreign Languages Professor; French Professor; German Professor; Instructor; Modern Languages Professor; Professor.

## At a glance

- **Median annual wage:** $79,350 (BLS OEWS, May 2025)
- **Median hourly wage:** Not published by BLS
- **Wage range (10th–90th percentile):** $49,060 to $136,050, with the middle half between $62,510 and $102,730
- **Total US employment:** 19,830
- **Typical entry education:** Doctorate
- **Preparation required:** Considerable preparation — O\*NET rates this "Job Zone Five: Extensive Preparation Needed"
- **Projected growth:** +0.2% over 2025–2035 (BLS EP, 2025–2035)
- **Annual job openings:** 1,600 openings a year
- **AI-resilience score:** 29/100 — a NueCareer heuristic over O\*NET work activities and context, not a BLS or O\*NET figure

## Pay

National wage distribution, BLS OEWS, May 2025, across 19,830 US jobs.

| Percentile | Annual wage |
| --- | --- |
| 10th | $49,060 |
| 25th | $62,510 |
| 50th (median) | $79,350 |
| 75th | $102,730 |
| 90th | $136,050 |
| Mean (average) | $89,990 |

### Pay by state

The 15 highest-paying states, by median annual wage. The cost-of-living-adjusted column divides the state median by that state's BEA Regional Price Parity, so the columns answer different questions: the first is what the job pays there, the second is what that pay buys there.

| State | Median annual wage | Cost-of-living adjusted | Employment |
| --- | --- | --- | --- |
| NH | $101,750 | $97,682 | 150 |
| DE | $101,100 | $101,294 | 70 |
| CA | $99,860 | $90,191 | 2,170 |
| MA | $98,750 | $93,374 | 960 |
| ME | $96,970 | $99,918 | 70 |
| NY | $95,120 | $88,139 | 1,520 |
| OR | $91,670 | $88,689 | 510 |
| MD | $87,280 | $83,156 | 280 |
| NV | $84,980 | $84,998 | 90 |
| MI | $83,190 | $86,461 | 500 |
| IL | $81,530 | $81,564 | 690 |
| SD | $81,080 | $91,527 | 40 |
| PR | $81,050 | No BEA price parity | 150 |
| MN | $80,650 | $81,778 | 410 |
| CT | $80,630 | $77,821 | 340 |

31 more states with published wage data are omitted here. The full table for all 46 states is at https://nuecareer.com/careers/foreign-language-and-literature-teacher-postsecondary/salary-by-state, or as JSON at https://nuecareer.com/api/v1/careers/foreign-language-and-literature-teacher-postsecondary.

## Outlook

BLS projects employment to move from 24,600 in the 2025–2035 base year to 24,700 by the end of the cycle — a gain of 100 jobs, or +0.2%. Slower than average: 0.2% against 3.5% projected for all occupations over the same cycle. About 1,600 openings a year are expected on average, counting openings from growth as well as from workers leaving the occupation permanently. Source: BLS EP, 2025–2035.

## How to get in

- **Typical entry education:** Doctoral or professional degree (BLS Employment Projections).
- **Preparation level:** Considerable preparation — O\*NET's preparation band for this occupation is "Job Zone Five: Extensive Preparation Needed".
- **Related work experience typically required:** None.
- **Typical on-the-job training:** None.

### Education people in this job actually hold

O\*NET surveys incumbents, so this distribution describes who is in the job today and can differ from the BLS entry requirement above.

| Education level | Share of workers |
| --- | --- |
| Doctoral Degree | 73.4% |
| Master's Degree | 17.8% |
| Bachelor's Degree | 8.7% |

## What the work involves

- Prepare course materials, such as syllabi, homework assignments, and handouts.
- Select and obtain materials and supplies, such as textbooks.
- Maintain student attendance records, grades, and other required records.
- Evaluate and grade students' class work, assignments, and papers.
- Write letters of recommendation for students.
- Participate in campus and community events.
- Maintain regularly scheduled office hours to advise and assist students.
- Prepare and deliver lectures to undergraduate or graduate students on topics such as how to speak and write a foreign language and the cultural aspects of areas where a particular language is used.

## Skills and knowledge

### Essential skills

- Speaking — importance 4.1 on the O\*NET 1–5 importance scale
- Reading Comprehension — importance 4.0 on the O\*NET 1–5 importance scale
- Active Listening — importance 4.0 on the O\*NET 1–5 importance scale
- Writing — importance 4.0 on the O\*NET 1–5 importance scale
- Learning Strategies — importance 4.0 on the O\*NET 1–5 importance scale
- Active Learning — importance 3.9 on the O\*NET 1–5 importance scale
- Critical Thinking — importance 3.8 on the O\*NET 1–5 importance scale
- Monitoring — importance 3.6 on the O\*NET 1–5 importance scale

### Transferable skills

These are the skills that carry into other occupations, and they drive the related-occupation and career-change rankings on this site.

- Instructing — importance 4.0 on the O\*NET 1–5 importance scale
- Complex Problem Solving — importance 3.5 on the O\*NET 1–5 importance scale
- Judgment and Decision Making — importance 3.5 on the O\*NET 1–5 importance scale
- Social Perceptiveness — importance 3.3 on the O\*NET 1–5 importance scale
- Coordination — importance 3.0 on the O\*NET 1–5 importance scale
- Time Management — importance 3.0 on the O\*NET 1–5 importance scale
- Service Orientation — importance 2.9 on the O\*NET 1–5 importance scale
- Persuasion — importance 2.8 on the O\*NET 1–5 importance scale

### Knowledge areas

- Foreign Language — importance 5.0 on the O\*NET 1–5 importance scale
- English Language — importance 4.4 on the O\*NET 1–5 importance scale
- Education and Training — importance 4.1 on the O\*NET 1–5 importance scale
- History and Archeology — importance 3.3 on the O\*NET 1–5 importance scale
- Philosophy and Theology — importance 3.3 on the O\*NET 1–5 importance scale
- Sociology and Anthropology — importance 3.1 on the O\*NET 1–5 importance scale

### Abilities

- Speech Clarity — importance 4.6 on the O\*NET 1–5 importance scale
- Oral Expression — importance 4.3 on the O\*NET 1–5 importance scale
- Oral Comprehension — importance 4.1 on the O\*NET 1–5 importance scale
- Written Comprehension — importance 4.0 on the O\*NET 1–5 importance scale
- Written Expression — importance 4.0 on the O\*NET 1–5 importance scale
- Speech Recognition — importance 4.0 on the O\*NET 1–5 importance scale

## Who it suits

O\*NET rates every occupation on the six Holland (RIASEC) interest areas, on a 1–7 scale. This occupation's strongest areas are Social (S), Investigative (I), Artistic (A).

| Interest area | Score (1–7) |
| --- | --- |
| S — Social | 7.00 |
| I — Investigative | 4.52 |
| A — Artistic | 4.06 |
| C — Conventional | 3.53 |
| E — Enterprising | 2.52 |
| R — Realistic | 2.11 |

### Personality fit

These scores are **derived by NueCareer**, not published by any government agency: they are cosine similarities between a personality type's trait profile and this occupation's O\*NET interest and work-style ratings, expressed 0–100. Treat them as a starting point for exploration, not as evidence that a type belongs in a job.

| Type | Fit score (0–100) |
| --- | --- |
| ENFJ | 72.4 |
| INFJ | 71.6 |
| ENFP | 69.3 |
| INFP | 65.4 |
| ESFP | 61.9 |

Best-fitting types: ENFJ, INFJ, ENFP.

## Related occupations

O\*NET's primary related occupations, in its own ranked order.

- [English Language and Literature Teacher, Postsecondary](https://nuecareer.com/careers/english-language-and-literature-teacher-postsecondary) — median $78,760
- [Area, Ethnic, and Cultural Studies Teacher, Postsecondary](https://nuecareer.com/careers/area-ethnic-and-cultural-studies-teacher-postsecondary) — median $85,020
- [High School Teacher](https://nuecareer.com/careers/high-school-teacher) — median $72,040
- [Adult Basic Education, Adult Secondary Education, and English as a Second Language Instructor](https://nuecareer.com/careers/adult-basic-education-adult-secondary-education-and-english-as-a-second-language-instructor) — median $61,540
- [History Teacher, Postsecondary](https://nuecareer.com/careers/history-teacher-postsecondary) — median $83,820
- [Middle School Teacher](https://nuecareer.com/careers/middle-school-teacher) — median $64,370
- [Anthropology and Archeology Teacher, Postsecondary](https://nuecareer.com/careers/anthropology-and-archeology-teacher-postsecondary) — median $99,650
- [Philosophy and Religion Teacher, Postsecondary](https://nuecareer.com/careers/philosophy-and-religion-teacher-postsecondary) — median $80,260
- [Elementary School Teacher](https://nuecareer.com/careers/elementary-school-teacher) — median $63,970
- [Interpreter and Translator](https://nuecareer.com/careers/interpreter-and-translator) — median $60,170

## Sources

- **O\*NET** — O\*NET 31.0 Database, August 2026. https://www.onetcenter.org/database.html
- **BLS OEWS** — BLS Occupational Employment and Wage Statistics, May 2025. https://www.bls.gov/oes/
- **BLS EP** — BLS Employment Projections, Table 1.2, 2025–2035. https://www.bls.gov/emp/
- **BLS OOH** — BLS Occupational Outlook Handbook, 2025–2035 edition. https://www.bls.gov/ooh/
- **BEA RPP** — BEA Regional Price Parities by State, 2024. https://www.bea.gov/data/prices-inflation/regional-price-parities-state-and-metro-area

---

This bank includes information from the O\*NET 31.0 Database by the U.S. Department of Labor, Employment and Training Administration (USDOL/ETA). Used under the CC BY 4.0 license (https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/). O\*NET® is a trademark of USDOL/ETA. NueCareer has transformed the data by joining it to BLS wage and projection data and deriving facet, personality-fit and AI-resilience scores. BLS and BEA data are public domain (17 U.S.C. §105).

O\*NET content is used under [CC BY 4.0](https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/). How these figures are sourced and derived: https://nuecareer.com/careers/methodology

JSON representation of this page: https://nuecareer.com/api/v1/careers/foreign-language-and-literature-teacher-postsecondary