Take the Academic Smart Risk with Online Adjunct Faculty Employment

The recent graduates of college and university master degree programs and Ph.D. programs are being shocked to their very intellectual cores by the absence of decent paying faculty positions at traditional post-secondary academic institutions. In fact, all these college educators are finding are poverty-level wages and entirely too many college students in the few available college classes. What is even more disturbing to these individuals with earned graduate degrees is that there does not seem to be any plan to increase their earnings from college teaching and that there are fewer and fewer adjunct college teacher remaining on the faculty at the end of each traditional college semester. Of course, the fewer adjunct instructors there are in the adjunct faculty pool, the more overcrowded the classrooms are since tenure-track professor and tenured academics will quit outright before interacting with a first-year composition student. So, the issue revolves around the dilemma of the traditional college teacher working on an adjunct basis and how to earn a decent living as academic.

The answer to these knotty issues is online bachelor degree programs and online master degree programs proliferating at breakneck speed as a result of the advances made in distance education technology last decade. This educational technology is making it possible for traditional college instructors to transition into an online adjunct with a teaching schedule chock-full of online college classes. Already, there are a small number of college teachers who teach for for-profit colleges that award the bachelor degree online and the online masters degree to their students enrolled in their online college degree programs. These college instructors earn a very nice living throughout the entire calendar year as a result of having grasped the dynamics of distance education and how it can work in the favor of intellectuals with earned graduate degree wanting to teach at the college level while earn a living wage. For these reasons is a good idea for a college instructor teaching on an adjunct basis for traditional postsecondary institution to take the academic smart risk with online adjunct faculty employment.

About ten years ago college and university administrators made the decision to devalue intellectual work done by adjunct faculty members. These academic administrators understood that the college teacher labor pool was so flooded with qualified college teachers that they could pay adjunct faculty members at traditional academic institutions extremely low amounts of money and still get the intellectual labor, the teaching of college students and physical college classroom, because the individuals with earned graduate degrees have no place else to go to earn a decent living. Today, unfortunately, the economic situation is even worse and the same university administrators feel comfortable not only continuing to pay adjunct faculty member at the same low wages but also firing large numbers of adjunct college instructors because they realize that the reason that many faculty members teaching on adjunct basis have even fewer viable options outside of academic teaching if they hope to actually earn enough money to pay the bills. All of this puts the person with the earned graduate degree in an untenable position which forces even more intellectual work out the adjunct instructor in a physical classroom at the same low rate of pay because student populations are ballooning at an incredible rate and the administrators understand they can literally force an adjunct faculty member to teach vastly overcrowded college classes without ever increasing their pay one thin dime.
However, traditional college teachers in this dire situation have options, and the primary option they have is to become online adjunct instructor for multiple accredited online college degree programs. It is important for any traditional adjunct college teacher to understand that when the decision is made to stop teaching in a physical classroom and start teaching online college courses a transformation is necessary and that transformation requires the person with the doctorate or masters degree to become an academic entrepreneur.

First and foremost, being a successful online adjunct instructor or academic entrepreneur comes from a deep understanding of the dynamics of the current academic labor market. New and returning college students are extremely comfortable with the personal electronic devices and they have little hesitancy enrolling in online college courses with online college degree programs that lead to online elementary teaching degrees, online healthcare degrees and an online project management degree. These college students actually want to engage higher-level education in online college classes with online college degree programs leading to an online bachelor degree or online master degree from personal computers at home and at work. For the enterprising academic seeking to gain control over the teaching schedule, which will lead to the ability to generate multiple online adjunct income streams throughout the year, the first thing that must occur is to realize that each new and returning college students in rolled in online degree programs actually represent an academic marketplace. That academic marketplace needs qualified academics who came employee tested time management techniques and demonstrate superior computer skills. The online adjunct instructor who can do this has a wide open field in which to market the educational and technical skill sets to a marketplace that is growing larger every day.

There are a variety of benefits acquired by online adjunct instructor who fills an online teaching schedule with ten to twelve online college courses for three or four accredited online college degree programs. One of the major benefits is personal and professional mobility. For example, an online adjunct instructor can make the decision in the morning to get on the airplane and travel to another city or another state just because the weather is nicer at the destination. In order to do this all that is necessary is for an online college teacher to pack up the inexpensive laptop computer in a bag in hand for the new geographic location. It is even possible today with widespread wireless access to the Internet to check into the online college classes during the travel from one place to another because almost every airport lounge has a wireless signal that allows instant logging onto the Internet. All the online college instructor has to do in order to arrive in the online college classroom is log onto the Internet. But the mobility alone, while wonderful, is not all that benefits the online adjunct instructor.

Teaching online provides a college teacher would be ability to scale the online teaching schedule up-and-down at any given time because if an online degree program is not paying what the online teacher thinks is a fair amount of money for this size of the classes or for large numbers of administrative tasks, the online college teacher can simply decline offered online college courses from that particular online degree program. This permits the academic who teaches online to literally decide what the intellectual work is worth, and it is a radical departure from what is experienced by college teachers in physical classrooms where anonymous individuals, the college or university administrators, decide without consulting the academic what the intellectual labor is worth in terms of remuneration. On the other hand, since all online teaching activity, the interaction with students in the online discussion forums and grading of the papers and the explanation of intellectual concepts, occurs on the Internet it is not necessary for the online adjunct instructor to be physically located at any one geographic position for any length of time. Additionally, this gives the online college teacher be ability to make an application to a postsecondary academic institution thousands of miles away that offer openings for online faculty positions to qualified online instructors.

At physical postsecondary academic institutions adjunct instructors are often very disempowering by the current state of the academic labor market. By harnessing inexpensive personal computers and mastering the digital navigation skills required to move effortlessly in and out online college courses with multiple accredited bachelor degree programs in accredited master degree programs, the academic entrepreneur turns the academic labor market on its ear. Suddenly, the lowly traditional adjunct faculty member is a great resource because as for-profit colleges have shown traditional colleges, universities and community colleges, distance education technology is much less expensive and much more efficient as a method of delivering college-level instruction. The traditional academic institutions have not ignored this lesson. Therefore, as the online teaching techniques for an online adjunct instructor improve over time the skill sets offered to the academic marketplace become even more valuable because those administrating online college degree programs understand that an individual with an earned graduate degree and the technical skills is worth hiring and paying well.

In the end, this may be the best possible time to enter college teaching as a career since there will only be more online bachelor degrees and online master’s degrees offered as time goes on. An online adjunct instructor who understands the changing academic dynamics of today’s academic marketplace can certainly benefit from the mobility and scalability of online adjunct jobs. As the economy creates further incentive for college and universities to increase their deployment of accredited online bachelor degree programs and online masters degree programs. This is the time to take the academic smart risk with online adjunct faculty employment.