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.

Take Your College Teaching One Step Further with Online College Jobs

It is quite possible that the best action a traditional adjunct instructor working for a physical college or university can take in order to actually make teaching college students worth the intellectual effort is to learn how to use a laptop computer to navigate in and out of online bachelor degree programs and online master degree programs. It is plain as day now that teaching college-level information in a physical college classroom is a distinctly quick path to poverty. Physical post-secondary academic institutions are on the financial ropes, so to speak, and they are doing everything they can to emulate the for-profit colleges’ success in satisfying the student demand for a chance to earn an accredited online accounting degree, an online business management degree or an electrical engineering bachelor degree online. While some stogy college instructors still argue that the physical college classroom is much superior to online college courses in terms of strict pedagogical articulations they are not experiencing the low wages and overcrowded traditional classrooms that are the lot of almost seventy percent of the college and university facilities across the board. The solution is these unpleasant academic circumstances, and it is a real solution, is to start teaching online for accredited online university degree programs. It is no longer any secret that for profit colleges that award their student populations the online master degree and bachelors degree online have enjoyed resounding success over the last ten or so years by taking advantage of the benefits offered by distanced education technology for both new and returning college students and post-secondary academic institutions. The very act of analyzing how distance education technology works and how it is the future of higher education will all traditional college instructors and anyone who is willing to earn an online master’s degree can take college teaching one step further with online college jobs.

An aggressive online adjunct instructor can actually earn a decent online adjunct income by acquiring eight to twelve online college courses with multiple accredited online college degree programs. On very important element to online teaching that every first-year college student must take core curriculum courses and since there are more new and returning college students enrolling each day in online nursing degree programs, for example, or an online mba program for another example there are many basic online college courses that must be taught by a qualified online adjunct instructor. In fact, there is a full time living to be earned just from first-year online college classes because there are so many of them. So, an effective search strategy for finding online degree programs that have these first-year online college courses is to visit the big colleges and schools and to make online faculty position applications to the for profit colleges that attract a solid majority of the new college students.

Successful online adjunct college instructors need to employ tightly-wound time management techniques in order to meet the deadlines imposed by the online college degree programs. The grades for online students must be posted in a timely fashion and the associate deans, as they are designated, in the accredited online degree programs are quite strict about this because the grade information is collected by data scans that occur at specific times. Additionally, there must be frequent interaction with the online college students in the online college courses because schools that deploy online degree programs are quite conscious about how active the online college teachers are in the online college degree programs. This insistence on participation is understandable because the colleges, universities and for-profit schools market the high-levels of online interactions as part of the attractiveness of earning an online degree.

The hardest aspect of online teaching is the search process that allows the prospective online instructor to find online college degree programs that have online college degree programs needing college teachers with lightening fast computer skills. Of course, those same technical skills are the supporting core of the search strategy. It is necessary to learn how to navigate the Internet to find the online classes to teach and to teach the online classes. The individuals with doctorates and master’s degrees who can become knowledgeable about moving in and out of a variety of digital academic interfaces can gather ten online courses to teach within a matter of months if the focus and motivation is present. Understandably, the competition for the available online adjunct positions is growing since university and college graduate programs continue to graduate individual with advanced academic degrees at a steady pace. This people with earned graduate degrees are finding out that after graduation there really isn’t any place for them in the private work force and that their best option for earning a decent living is to teach online. The difference between the successful prospective online adjunct teachers and the ones who can’t seem to ever find an online college class to teach is drive and determination.

One of the best aspects of online teaching is that the instructor of the online college classes can move about the world freely at any time they choose to do so. This personal and professional mobility is the result of the location of the accredited online university degree programs. All online education is located on the Internet, which means the online college teacher is not required to be anchored to a single geographic location. In the past, a traditional college teacher working on an adjunct basis actually needed to stay in one city or state because it was required to travel in a motor vehicle to each physical college campus every day just to reach the college classroom. Of course, the need to be within driving distance of the college or university campus consumed a good portion of the small amount of money adjunct were paid to teach the physical college classes. Further, this imperative to be within traveling distance of the various schools applied only to those adjunct instructors who lived in crowded urban area capable of actually supporting multiple physical post-secondary academic institutions.

All a college teacher working online needs in terms of a vehicle to arrive at work is an inexpensive personal computer. The online classes are accessed every day but logging onto the Internet with a wireless signal. This means the online college instructor can easily decide on a Monday to pack up the online degree programs in a shoulder bag, hop on an airplane and resume online teaching the next day in a new locale. In fact, it is possible to check in on the online students in the online classes during a layover because wireless access is available in practically all national airports. Further, if the online adjunct instructor wants to take off again it isn’t a problem. The biggest choice in terms of geographic location an online college teacher has to make is to simply stay put for any length of time. Any person with an earned graduate degree currently pondering online teaching as a career path should ask it the idea of teaching college students from the south of France, in the lobby of a boutique hotel in Italy or on the beaches of California is an appealing idea. If this is a good idea, then the mobility offered by teaching online for three or four accredited online college degree programs is definitely something to take a serious look at right now.

The real problem with teaching as a traditional adjunct faculty member in a physical college classroom isn’t the intellectual tasks necessary for transferring universality-level lessons. The problem is that the college and administrators will not allow the faculty to return to the tenure system. It is much cheaper to employ adjunct college teachers because they are temporary intellectual laborers. There isn’t anything about this academic labor model that will change, so the solution is to find online degree programs that offer student the accredited online bachelor degree and the accredited online master degree. Ultimately, taking charge of the teaching schedule by becoming an academic entrepreneur instead of remaining a low-paid faculty member will certainly result in more income from college teaching and can go a long way to generating the feeling of intellectual empowerment felt immediately after leaving graduate school. For example, it is not out of the ordinary for an online college class to pay the instructor two thousand dollars. This may not seem much different than what is normally earned at a small liberal arts college for teaching a physical college class, but the real economic impact is located in the length of time the online college courses last as opposed to the long sixteen week semester held by traditional colleges and universities. Many for-profit colleges offer online courses as short as five weeks. This means that the online adjunct can teach two or three times as many online courses as traditional college courses during the calendar year. Of course, these extra online courses also generate much more income since they very often run back to back. For the reason and others it is time to take your college teaching one step further with online college jobs.