Educators Should Thrust Themselves into Online Teaching Openings

The decision to start teaching online for a living requires a definite level of intellectual and professional courage, but given the dynamic growth in distance education at the post-secondary level of the academic there can be no doubt that online teaching favors the academic brave. The online adjunct instructor is responsible for managing the online teaching schedule in a way that is unfamiliar to the teacher in the physical classroom. For example, since there are over five thousand community colleges, four-year state universities, for-profit colleges, technical schools and state colleges that offer their enrolled students a chance to earn an academic degree from their personal computers at home or at work the online adjunct must decide which online degree programs offer more online adjunct income and make a conscious decision to apply to them. While this responsibility is consistent to teaching independently as a part-time adjunct instructor for two colleges at one time, but the difference created by coordinating up to ten or twelve online adjunct professor jobs is that the pressure to make well informed decisions is much higher than in a physical academic setting. Still, the academic that is brave enough to transition out of the physical classroom on the physical campus and into a variety of online college courses will find that there is more stability to be had by taking responsibility for creating a sustainable online teaching schedule than waiting around for the next series of budget cuts.

The teacher layoffs resulting from deep budget cuts to public education are taking a toll on the spirit of traditional educators working on the physical campus. This is hardly surprising since teaching for a public educational institution has long been considered a career path that could be pursued without much concern for budgetary funds needed to support the faculty salaries. However, that truism is no longer valid as many teachers working in the physical classroom discover they can become unemployed as soon as the budgetary funds are sharply decreased each academic year. Fortunately, the adoption of distance education technology by academic administrators at the post-secondary level of the academy offer educators with earned graduate degrees, a master degree or doctorate, can offer academics a teaching life rich with meaning provided they acquire an online teaching schedule filled with online adjunct faculty jobs. The primary benefit of six to eight online adjunct professor jobs is that the educators can still interact with college and university students enrolled in online bachelor degree programs and online master degree programs will earn an online adjunct income equal to the traditional faculty salary lost to downsizing and layoffs, and the chance to recapture the pride of being an educator is one that will go a long way to restoring the rich meaning of being a professional teacher.

Teachers are a generally disinclined to take risks with their career plans and this has been an intelligent approach until recently when the severe budget cuts to public education resulted in massive teacher layoffs. Since traditional academic employment is now quite risky in terms of its sustainability it may be time for teachers with earned graduate degrees, a doctorate or master degree, working in a physical classroom on a physical campus to take a look at the calculated risk of teaching online for a living. First, distance education technology is now the engine selected to pull post-secondary education instruction into the twenty first century, and the reason for this relocation of the actual classroom to the Internet is that the operational costs of maintaining the physical campuses and the physical classrooms on them since the budgetary reductions continue to reduce available funds each academic year. Obviously, the creation of online bachelor degree programs and online master degree programs also generates many new online faculty jobs that must be filled by academically qualified and technically agile online adjunct college professors willing to learn how to teach college and university students from a personal computer. Granted, it is nothing short of a calculated risk for an academic to build an online teaching schedule in order to transition out of the physical classroom and into a variety of online college courses, but the risk will prove worth the effort since distance learning is the real future of post-secondary instruction. The academic that makes the decision to build an online teaching schedule should not be content with just a few online faculty positions. It is important for any prospective online adjunct instructor to realize that the emerging nature of distance education technology it will continue to be vitally important to continue acquiring more online faculty teaching positions each academic semester. For example, a particular online bachelor degree program many provide two or three online college classes, but the state college for four-year university offering the online degree program to its post-secondary students can reduce the online instructor pay for each individual online class without notice because there is no shared standard for what a college or university pays for an online instructor to teach an online course from a personal computer. This means that an online college professor must be able to replace lower paying online teaching positions with higher paying online adjunct jobs on a moment's notice. The only way to do this is to have as many online faculty positions as possible in the teaching schedule at all times. While it will take considerable determination to continually submit applications to additional post-secondary academic institutions, the effort will pay off handsomely when it comes time to decline low paying online teaching jobs.
The most important strategic element any prospective online adjunct instructor can have is a goal of acquiring multiple online adjunct jobs. The reason this particular element of online teaching requires particular attention is that the individual community colleges, four-year state colleges, state universities, technical schools and for-profit colleges that currently offer distance education to their enrolled students are not held to any standard for paying their online college professors. That means it is up to the individual post-secondary academic institution to decide independently how little or how much to pay an online instructor to teach an individual online college course. Of course, this also means that a college or university can instantly lower the amount for online adjunct professor jobs available at that educational institution. Far too often that is exactly what happens since there is a growing pool of academically qualified educators willing to teach for less online adjunct income simply because they can no longer teach in the physical classroom on the traditional campus. This increasing completion for available online adjunct jobs should spur the academic now building a sustainable online teaching schedule to constantly make new applications in the faculty application sections for the thousands of colleges and universities because it is the online instructor dedicated to keeping abreast of the changing dynamics of online teaching as an academic career choice.

The adoption of distance education by academic administrators and new and returning college and university students means academics can find the threshold of unparalleled success with online teaching. Undoubtedly, the career opportunities on physical campuses are diminishing quickly as the budget reductions to public education make the operation of the traditional college and university campuses unsupportable since they require very expensive maintenance. As a result, the location of the educational instruction at the post-secondary level of the academy is being moved at a rapid clip to the Internet in the form of online college degree programs containing innumerable online college courses. Of course, the more online courses there are for students to enroll in each semester the more online adjunct professor jobs that must be filled by educators with earned graduate degrees, a doctorate or master degree, and the technical agility to teach from a personal computer. The online adjunct instructor that masters the requirements of successful online teaching can expect to experience an unheard of level of personal and professional freedom as a result of being able to teach the online courses from practically any geographic location on the globe and the ability to scale the number of individual online faculty positions in the online teaching schedule up or down at will.

The dramatic developments in the academic landscape are certainly of interest to traditional educators since one of the most active features of the new educational reality is the rise in teacher layoffs as budget cuts bite deeply into the funds needed to pay academics on the traditional campus. The end result of these reductions in budgets is that the location of instructional delivery has moved to the Internet in the form of online college classes. The rise in the number of online bachelor degree programs and online master degree programs clearly indicates that for educators faculty online positions are the result of the changes in academia. In other words, any academic wanting to continue teaching for a living should learn how to teach online college classes for a variety of online college degree programs. Fortunately for the prospective online adjunct instructor, the accreditation boards for community colleges, state universities, for-profit schools and four-year state colleges insist that each online college course be taught by an academic with a master degree or doctorate. Of course, as academic administrators deploy more online degree programs each academic semester, the need for academically quailed and technically proficient online adjuncts increases at a rapid rate. The best search strategy for taking advantage of the growing number of available online faculty positions that can be coordinated from a personal computer is to learn how to locate the faculty application sections of the thousands of post-secondary academic websites.

How an Adjunct Instructor Can Win the Academic Game

Many an adjunct instructor is puzzled these days as to how to continue teaching at the post-secondary level and still maintain a decent lifestyle. This is hardly surprising since the budgetary funds needed to pay adjunct faculty salaries, as economically thin as they are now, is tied to tax revenues at the state level and the states are running out of cash, or at least that is the current narrative. If this narrative is indeed accurate then it is time for all adjunct instructors teaching at traditional college and university campuses to take a very hard look at the online bachelor degree programs and online masters degree programs and the online adjunct jobs they have for the enterprising adjunct instructor.

The administrators of state universities, community colleges and four-year colleges have distance education technology that can be employed in order to meet the post-secondary educational needs of new and returning college students. This same technology can be harnessed by an adjunct college instructor and used to generate a handsome annual income from a personal computer located at practically any spot on the globe. Further, once the transition as been made from the physical college classroom to online college courses, the ability of an adroit online adjunct instructor to acquire even more online college courses to add to the online teaching portfolio is not restricted by geographical distances between physical campuses.

Since all online college courses are located on the Internet, it is possible to apply to teach them from an inexpensive personal computer. In fact, the entire application process, from locating the faculty application sections of the thousands of post-secondary academic institutions to submitting academic credentials to successfully completing the online teaching training for each school, can be successfully accomplished from any place that offers access to the Internet. This means coffee shops and bookstores can easily be the office of an adjunct instructor that teaches online for online bachelor degree programs.

Further, the online adjunct instructor that actually understands the changing dynamics of the academic labor force, which means that the vast majority of college teachers will be online adjunct instructors that teach for multiple college and universities from remote locations, can scale the online adjunct income streams up or down as needed. For example, if more online adjunct income is desired at any time during the year, it is a simple matter to apply to additional online college degree programs. Remember, there will only be more online teaching available for academically and technically qualified individuals as the years roll on. If more free time is required by the online adjunct instructor, it is just as simple to merely decline offered online college courses with a few online degree programs. Since the proliferation of online college classes and the online college degree programs that contain them will only grow into the future, it will be a small matter to find extra online classes when they are needed for additional online adjunct income. Simply put, an adjunct instructor can win the academic game as it is played today by learning how to teach online for multiple online bachelor degree programs.

The Winning Strategy for an Online Adjunct Instructor

An adjunct college professor today will probably have some serious doubts about the possibility of even having a winning strategy when it comes to post-secondary instruction. This is entirely understandable since graduate school offer little or no help in terms of how to market the academic skill set that is so hard to acquire on the way to earning a graduate degree. However, there is a winning strategy that an online adjunct instructor, which is assuming that there is some ability with a personal computer and some desire to earn more money than is possible right now on a physical college or university campus, which can result in a full time online teaching schedule capable of producing online adjunct income streams throughout the year.

It may be hard for a traditional adjunct college instructor to believe that it is possible to make two or three times as much money by teaching online over continuing to provide instruction in a physical classroom, but the fact is that distance education technology is the new academy and will become more of the academy as the years roll on. So, it would be a very good idea for any individual with a Ph.D. or master’s degree to learn as much as possible about the application process for online adjunct jobs and as much as possible about how to manage the online faculty positions as they become available.

The administrator’s of the state colleges, four-year universities and community colleges will certainly make online college degrees more available simply because it is in their best interest to meet the students’ educational needs with computer serves loaded with college texts and assignments over the upward spiraling costs of maintain a physical plant such as a college campus. As more online business management degrees are made available and more online nursing masters programs appear on the Internet, the numbers of online college faculty positions will be accessible for qualified academics.

The most effective approach to landing a series of online adjunct jobs is to start applying to the thousands of post-secondary academic institutions that offer their students a mechanical engineering degree online, an online masters degree in school counseling or an online mba degree program. That is to say every school that has any hope at all of managing their failing budgets. Of course, the academic labor market is changing rapidly in order to accommodate the implementation of distance education and grasping the meaning of those changes is at the core of a winning strategy for a prospective online adjunct instructor.

The best approach for finding enough online faculty positions is to locate the faculty application section on the college or university website. Once in the application section, it is a simple matter to introduce the required academic credentials to be considered for a position teaching online college classes. The act of making a dozen or more online faculty position applications every day should yield an invitation to participate in the online teaching training program of at least one or two schools. Eventually, after a year or two, it will be possible to earn a full time living that far exceeds that which can be earned in a physical college or university classroom from an inexpensive laptop computer that are accesses online bachelor degree programs and online master’s degree programs located on the Internet.

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.