Academic Employment with Distance Learning Courses

The real problem with being an adjunct college faculty member today is that the courses available in a physical college, university or community college classroom on a traditional campus simply do not pay very well for the intellectual effort to teach them, and the only way to increase the number of college classes dependent on a physical campus is to actually have another community college or state university to teach for each day, and the availability of another classroom on another campus is defined by the ability to physically travel between the campuses. In the end, it is practically impossible to earn a decent living by teaching as an adjunct college instructor unless one lives in a densely populated urban area sufficiently supported by cheap, efficient public transportation. Unfortunately, this is not often available to the adjunct instructor, so there has to be a revision of what was learned in graduate school in terms of actually earning a living as a college or university professor if there is any hope of actually doing so in the light of contemporary academic labor forces. The trick, if it can be called that, is to understand the significance of the presences of growing numbers of online bachelor degree programs and online master’s degree programs on the viability of the academic labor model.

Today’s college and university student has a personal computer available to access the Internet, and there is little or no hesitation enrolling in distance learning courses leading to an online bachelor of nursing degree, a criminal justice associate degree online or a business management degree online. Therefore, the academic administrators in desperate straits to find an economically efficient alternative to building out and maintain the physical classroom and the physical campuses on which they reside are quickly implementing online college degree programs in every imaginable area of undergraduate and graduate study. The online degree programs offer educators with graduate degrees a very real way to develop an online adjunct income that can replace or supplement an income lost to he changes to the academic labor model. The prospective online adjunct instructor should start now to locate adjunct faculty online teaching opportunities with state colleges, community colleges, for-profit colleges and four-year universities by using a computer to visit the websites of the thousands of schools, find the link on the first page of the site and follow it to the faculty application section.

The successful online adjunct instructor with five to eight distance learning courses in an online teaching portfolio will need time management skills in order to coordinate the academic interaction with the students and the administrative duties associated with managing any area of post-secondary study. The nature of online teaching means that the online adjunct can teach the online classes from practically any place on the globe that offers a connection to the Internet. Ultimately, this means that an alert online adjunct instructor can move about at will and never interrupt the constant online adjunct income streams that can be earned throughout the year. So, distance learning courses can provide academic employment for intellectuals with graduate degrees and offer the additional benefit of personal and professional mobility.