No Need for a Magic Academic Wand to Become an Online College Faculty Member

The locus of economic responsibility for the low pay and over-crowded classrooms experienced by adjunct college and university instructors teaching college classes at traditional post-secondary academic institutions does not lie at the feet of the individual college teachers with earned graduate degrees, a Ph.D. or master’s degree, and they should not accept the current situation as one that cannot be managed effectively in favor of the college teacher. The truth of matter is that college administrators at traditional schools decided some time ago it wasn’t necessary to pay college adjuncts a significant amount of money for teaching college students. Currently, seventy percent of the college faculty is comprised of overworked, underpaid temporary academic laborers who have no say whatsoever about the conditions under which they teach college students. Understandably, there is a great deal of frustration and anger on the part of college instructors who are not able to earn a living wage from teaching in the physical college classroom. For these individuals there is a viable alternative, and this alternative is the result of distance education technology and the ease with which it allows the production of online bachelor degree programs and online master degree programs.

It is time for college teachers to take advantage of the economic potential presented by accredited online college degree programs. As traditional colleges and universities run out of budget funds they are turning more and more to the successful academic models currently deployed by for-profit colleges that offer their student populations the opportunity to learn a library science degree online, enroll in online law degree programs and enroll in online nursing schools. As the traditional colleges, community colleges, technical schools and state universities rollout new online degree programs the need for qualified online adjunct instructors will skyrocket. Personal technology in the form of laptop computers, for example, has never been cheaper and it makes it very cost effective for a college teacher who wants to become an online adjunct instructor with a teaching schedule filled with as many as a dozen or more online college classes to become empowered by merely logging onto the Internet. It should be understood by every adjunct college teacher wanting to earn a living wage by teaching college students that there is no need for a magic academic wand to become an online college faculty member.

The most effective search and application strategy for finding accredited online college degree programs to teach for is to visit daily some of the over five thousand websites maintained by colleges, universities and for-profit colleges. On the first page of each one of these academic websites is a link that will allow the prospective online adjunct instructor access into the faculty application portal. Once in the faculty application section is only necessary to use the digital interface to submit the academic credentials required by every online adjunct instructor placed in online college classes. It will take some time for a response to be received from a online degree program by a prospective online college teacher, but this is primarily the result of the onslaught of applications for online faculty positions received every day by academic institutions with online degree programs; after all, there are growing numbers of college teachers who want to teach online for a living. Today, it makes a great deal of sense to apply first tw for-profit colleges that offer the online bachelor degree online master degree since the schools have been in the business of distance education for the most part of the last decade and they have a very well-developed interchange in place for hiring online adjunct instructors to teach their students enrolled in online college course.

An online college instructor can easily teach ten or more online college courses at one time by utilizing effective time management techniques and constantly improving the necessary computer skills. In order to manage the teaching responsibilities and administrative duties inherent in online teaching full time it is vital to understand how the Internet works and how to navigate between various academic interfaces every day and still meet the grading and student interaction deadlines. However, even a very traditional college instructor who does not know a laptop computer from a doorknob can learn how to teach online with the right level of determination and focus. After all, if an individual can earn a Ph.D. or master’s degree it is possible to master teaching online college courses.

Additionally, an online adjunct instructor has the freedom to travel to any geographic at will. This means that if an online college teacher with an online teaching schedule containing eight to ten online college courses wants to teach the courses from a beach in California it is possible to do so just by traveling there. Further, it is also possible to apply to accredited online college degree programs that are hosted by college and universities that exist thousands of miles away from the online college teacher. So, if an online adjunct instructor is dissatisfied with one online degree programs it no harder than logging onto the Internet in order to apply for online faculty positions with another school. As any traditional adjunct instructor working for a physical schools will readily attest, the ability to move wholesale from one college or university to another is simply not possible since physical academic institutions can only offer physical college classes to students who live nearby the schools’ campuses. Thus, the college teacher working on an adjunct basis at a physical campus must either accept the classes proffered for do without a paycheck.

There can be no doubt that teaching college students as a career is a valuable use of a graduate degree, but the issues of how to live on the pay that traditional adjunct earn comes up over and over again as a very real economic issue for contemporary academics. To put a find point on the online teaching argument, it is possible to earn a good deal more by teaching online college courses than it is possible to earn over a calendar year by teaching in a physical classroom. If nothing else, the vast majority of online degree programs offer college students online courses straight through the summer months. By doings so, the online college degree programs provide academic employment all year long. With that in mind, the year-long streams of online adjunct income from back-to-back online adjunct jobs make learning as much as possible about teaching online worth the effort. Every traditional college adjunct instructor who is not earning enough to make ends meet by teaching in a physical college classroom for traditional colleges, community colleges and universities should take a hard look at how much more income can be generated by online teaching on a full time basis. Further, the dual benefits of personal and professional mobility resulting from the portability o the online college degree programs and the scalability of the online teaching schedule are not to be ignored by today’s college adjunct.

It takes a great deal of determination and intellect to earn a graduate degree. The people who have the wherewithal to manage such an academic journey and successfully survive it are due a decent income. The way to acquire that living is by teaching online for a variety of accredited online university degree programs that offer today’s college students a chance to use their personal computers to earn an online bachelor degree or an online master degree. With personal technology as ubiquitous as it is today, college teachers should fully understand there is no need for a magic academic wand to become an online college faculty member.

Use Your Natural Persistence Streak to Join the Online University Faculty

Most adjunct college instructors working for traditional post-secondary academic institutions no longer wonder if they will be able to earn a living, a sustainable living, by teaching college students. The evidence that they cannot earn a decent living is overwhelming, but the vast majority of them still have no idea why this is so. Primarily, the problem is one of logic, which it would be suspected wouldn't be that big a stumbling block for a person who has the intelligence to earn a doctorate or masters degree. Unfortunately, this is exactly the case since there does not seem to be any awareness that the future of higher education is moving to the Internet in the form of online bachelor degree programs in online master degree programs. Perhaps it is a failure, this inability to comprehend why traditional adjunct college teachers do not have two nickels to rub together, of grasping the logic offered to us by Enlightenment thinking. For example, graduate programs continue to churn out individuals with advanced academic degrees such as a Ph.D. or a masters degree despite the fact that there is little employment for these individuals either in the academy or in the corporate world. For those intellectuals with earned graduate degrees who attempt to earn their daily bread by teaching college students in a physical college classroom, the academic marketplace has a very unpleasant reality in store for them.

College and university administrators long ago understood that the academic labor pool was filled to overflowing with desperate individuals who actually were qualified to teach college students. These academic administrators also understood that they could hire these people with earned graduate degrees to teach at the physical colleges and universities for pennies a day. So they did just that and the result is that it is practically impossible to earn a sustainable living by teaching is a adjunct college instructor in a physical postsecondary academic institution. Fortunately, distance education technology is available in such a mature state today that the for-profit colleges that confer the bachelor degree online and online masters degree have made financial and academic fortunes by employing this technology in the form of offering their new and returning college students the accredited online bachelor degree and an accredited online master degree.

The alert person with earned graduate degree should realize that by applying tested time management techniques and using advanced computer skills they can participate in the prolongation of accredited online degree programs and earn a very substantial online adjunct income. Of course, it does require an application of Enlightenment logic to make the leap from physical college classroom to online college courses as a career path. It is important that college teachers wanting to make this leap use their natural persistent streak to join the online university faculty enjoy a decent income.

An aggressive online adjunct instructor who has an online teaching schedule bill with eight to ten online college courses with two or three different online college degree programs can easily earn much more money every year than the traditional academic counterpart capable of only teaching two or three physical college courses as an adjunct instructor at a physical university or college. The primary reason this is possible is because of technology. All online college courses and the online degree programs they are in exist on the Internet. The way to access these online college classes and apply to new online college degree programs is by using a computer to log on to the Internet. It is much more cost efficient to use a computer to access an online college course than to drive a motor vehicle for one college or university campus to another. Interestingly, this cost effectiveness is lost on the vast majority of people with earned graduate degrees.

These individuals continue to insist that teaching in a physical college classroom is far superior to teaching online college courses despite the inevitable reality that they are soon reduced to eating shoestring soup during the summer months in which they have no physical college classes to teach. On the other hand, an online adjunct instructor does not worry about having online adjunct income during the summer months because large numbers of accredited online college degree programs offer the same number of online college courses to their college students during the summer as they do the rest of the year. Therefore, an online college teacher can generate multiple online adjunct income streams throughout the entire calendar year by learning as much as possible about the deployment of online college degree programs and becoming more proficient each passing day with an inexpensive laptop computer.

The first step of applying Enlightenment logic to the adjunct instructor situation today, of course, is to grasp the dynamics, the physical dynamics, of the emerging online college and university as a viable avenue by which to pursue an academic teaching career. The first element of the online post-secondary academic institution is the college student populations. New and returning college students today are very comfortable with their personal electronic devices such as computers. As a result of this comfort they are amenable to the idea of earning an online mathematics degree, online elementary teaching degrees and an online degree in business management. The Internet for the students is a very familiar terrain, and they easily grasped that enrolling in accredited online college degree program and taking the online college courses contained in the online university degree programs is a much better expenditure of their limited time and energy than traveling in a personal vehicle to remote physical college campus at odd hours of the day and night sitting in a poorly maintained physical college classroom while listening to a lecture or taking a test. The online adjunct instructor understands the situation and immediately starts applying to colleges, universities, community colleges and for-profit colleges that offer online degree programs to their student populations.

A college teacher who has a full online teaching schedule enjoys a number of benefits that simply are not available to adjunct college teachers working for a physical college or university. For example, it is not necessary for an online adjunct instructor to remain in one geographical location for any length of time. If an online college teacher wishes to move to a town or city that offers a lower cost of living it is only a matter of packing up the inexpensive left off computer on which the online college courses are accessed in moving to the new location. If an online college instructor wants to live in another country all that is required is to get on the airplane or boat and go to the country because wireless access to the Internet is practically universal. Another benefit enjoyed by individuals with graduate degrees who choose online teaching career path is the ability to teach online college courses for academic institutions thousands of miles from the actual location of the online college teacher. It only requires logging onto the Internet and going to the website of a new college, university or for-profit college and making an application to teach online. In the end, the distinct advantages to becoming an online teacher far outweigh the difficulties of remaining a college adjunct at a physical college or university and this is why it is important to use your natural persistent streak to join the online university faculty.