The economic goalposts, so to speak, for academics are moving almost beyond the visible horizon as a result of the budget cuts directed at public education. A traditional adjunct instructor teaching on a physical college or university campus is barely making a living from two or three college classes available to teach, and this unenviable dilemma is exacerbated by the difficulty obtaining additional classes to teach since it is necessary for a traditional college faculty member to be able to drive to the next campus in order to earn the small amount from teaching at that post-secondary institution. Educators at secondary academic institutions are facing massive layoffs that leave them completely without any income at all. On the other hand, the academic administrators responsible for meeting the educational demands of the swelling student populations at the college and university level o the academy are moving as quickly as possible to distance education technology as an affordable means of delivering educational instruction to college and university students. This transition out of the physical plant known as the university, community and college campus and the classrooms on them and into online bachelor degree programs and online masters degree programs is occurring because the budget funds allowed public education for operational and maintenance is simply not enough to adequately cover the costs of the physical plants and the faculty salaries.
The result of this transition is large numbers of online teaching opportunities for alert, aggressive individuals with earned graduate degrees, a Ph.D. or master’s degree, and a burning desire to take back control of their teaching career by becoming a full time online adjunct instructor, which should be the primary goal of every teacher now that want to earn a decent living. Additionally, college and university students today are so comfortable with their personal computers and the Internet that earning an online masters in psychology, an engineering degree online or a registered nursing degree online is a natural action given the technological development now in play in the academy. The academic that grasps the dynamics of online teaching and how six to eight online college courses taught from a laptop can generate multiple online adjunct income streams will be considerably closer to economic success and professional satisfaction that continuing to try to reclaim the classroom.
The best approach to landing as many online adjunct jobs as possible in the shortest period of time is to start making applications for faculty positions as an online adjunct instructor at the over five thousand state colleges, four year universities and community colleges. Every post-secondary academic institution now offers some form of accredited distance learning program to their students and even more online college degree programs will be implemented in the coming semesters. Of course, the economic benefits of online teaching, while very nice once a certain level is reached by the online adjunct instructor, are less attractive to many educators than the mobility inherent in teaching from a personal computer that can be picked up and taken to practically any place on the globe.
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