The underemployed traditional adjunct college professor and the recently unemployed secondary educator have similar problems in that they need to earn a decent living. Of course, in both instances the difficulty of earning that living as an educator just became a lot more, well, difficult as a result of the massive teacher layoffs. However, there is a bright intellectual light at the end of this long academic tunnel and it requires academics at all levels to locate multiple online instructor job openings now in order to take advantage of that light. The simple fact is that distance education technology is the future of education. Granted, its presence now is more observable in the form of online bachelor degree programs and online masters degree programs, but it will become more pervasive as time goes on and will become a significant element in all levels of the academy. Therefore, gaining experience with online teaching now is an excellent application of the extra time and energy resulting from not having physical classes to teach each day. Make no mistake about it, a academic with a earned graduate degree and classroom experience can fill an online teaching portfolio with multiple online college courses by learning to locate colleges and universities that offer online college degree programs that allow students to earn an online business administration degree, an online masters degree in school counseling or an online bachelor degree in accounting, which are just a sampling of the academic areas of study now available on the Internet. It is probably safe to say that a prospective online adjunct instructor can find an online degree program in practically any imaginable area of study that contains online college classes that need a qualified online instructor to teach it.
The best approach to actually identifying the availability of online instructor job openings for a particular state college, four-year university, for-profit school or community college, all of which now have some form of accredited distance learning programs, is to use a personal computer to visit the school’s website and locate the link on the front page of the site that leads to the faculty application section. It is advisable to understand that this link is in a different place on each college and university website because each school will have a different website design. However, a close inspection will ultimately reveal the link and once in the faculty application section it is a very simple matter to submit the appropriate academic credentials, which includes information about the earned graduate degree and years of teaching experience. There is an absolute need for a Ph.D. or master’s degree in order to be considered for an online adjunct job at a post-secondary academic institution because of the requirements of the accreditation boards, but it is not always absolutely necessary to have online teaching experience in order to be considered for one or more of the available online instructor job openings with a particular college or university. After all, every school will require a newly-hired online adjunct instructor to participate in and successfully complete a training program before being assigned to any online college courses.
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