Many educators are trying to figure out how to supplement their incomes from teaching today. This scramble is nothing new for adjunct college instructors, but it may be a new need for teachers at other levels of the educational spectrum. For some individuals with classroom experience, a graduate degree and the technical skills required for interacting with the Internet to search for online bachelor degree programs and online master’s degree programs, distance education technology may provide a viable path for replacing lost income from public education budget cuts. The reality of the academy today is that online college degree programs are the way that post-secondary instruction will be delivered to new and returning college and university students. The effort to learn how to function as an online adjunct instructor will result in multiple online adjunct income streams throughout the year. Granted, it takes time to populate an online teaching schedule with multiple online classes delivering regular paychecks. However, online adjunct positions are real and they are available provided the effort is made by the prospective online adjunct instructor to find them.
State universities, four-year colleges, for-profit colleges and community colleges are in the process of moving their various degree programs entirely online. This means that the instructional materials can be access by college students and online instructors by simply logging onto the Internet from an inexpensive personal computer. It is easy to imagine the vast numbers of online college courses that need an academically qualified instructor teaching it, but it is just as important to imagine how online teaching can be of great financial benefit to a teacher that needs extra income or is faced with replacing an income from teaching as a result of budget cuts on the state level. Of course, the vast majority of educators, and this is most true for adjunct college professors, depend on state funds for an income.
The real reason incomes from teaching as a state employee, and all educators that work for public schools at all levels are state employees, are going away is that there is a radical shift in the academic labor force and how it is used by academic administrators to meet the needs of swelling student populations. This labor paradigm is not pedagogical in nature; it is economic in nature. The academic administrators have discovered that they can hire an almost endless supply of adjunct college instructors for very small amounts of money. At the post-secondary level of education, on the physical college, university and community college campuses, this repositioning of the intellectual laborer has proven to be outstandingly successful in that it saves an incredible amount of money for the administrators to dedicate to the maintenance of the physical plant known as the campus.
It is inevitable that every academic discipline that can be moved out of the physical college classroom and onto the Internet will be moved as time goes on. This is why online adjunct positions are very real and that the successful educator will make every effort to apply to online university programs that offer college students a chance to earn an online master in teaching, a psychology degree online or an online business management degree.
April 12, 2011
0 Comments