Many people with earned graduate degrees, a Ph.D. or a master’s degree, are starting to become interested in the employment prospects offered by distance education, and once these individuals engage in a little exploration they are discovering the surprising benefits of online college teaching jobs. For many prospective online adjunct instructors with online bachelor degree programs and online masters degree programs the most pleasant aspect of teaching online is the absence of any need to operate a personal motor vehicle to arrive at work. Interestingly, this is the same benefit enjoyed by new and returning college students enrolled in online degree programs that allow them to earn a library science degree online, online elementary teaching degrees and an electrical engineering bachelor degree online. In both cases, online student and online adjunct instructor, access to the online college courses is completely available on the Internet.
In both cases, an inexpensive laptop computer capable of accessing the online degree program through a wireless network completely replaces the car or truck that was mandatory in the past to actually arrive on a physical college campus. The fact that physical travel is no longer necessary for a college teacher managing the academic duties of multiple online college courses represents a significant savings in terms of time and money. Another pleasantly surprising aspect of teaching for accredited online college degree programs is the scalability of the teaching schedule.
A person with a graduate degree who teaches online is more of an academic entrepreneur than an academic employee. An online college teacher markets an academic and technical skills set to over five thousand technical schools, community colleges, state colleges, four-year universities and for-profit post-secondary institutions that confer the bachelors degree online and online masters degree. The online teacher has control of this or her teaching schedule because online college classes can be accepted or declined without economic penalty.
In other words, an online adjunct who wants to make more money from online teaching can simply apply to more online degree programs and accept additional online college courses to teach. If an online instructor wants more free time, it is just as simple to decline offered online courses from a college or university. The schools are satisfied with this arrangement because it is to their economic benefit to have an academic labor force that is responsible for themselves, rather than the schools having to provide a place to work and salary commitments.
Granted, there are some people who teach college courses for traditional academic institutions who want to retain the disappear tenure-track system that has for so long been an economic model for faculty labor, but the landscape, so to speak, has changed irreversibly due to budget cuts and the tenure system will continue to fade into history. However, as one academic labor system fades out another is taking its place, and the deployment of distance education technology is creating a new post-secondary career path for those with a graduate degree or those willing to enroll in and complete an accredited online masters degree program. Simply put, college instructors who can master the academic and technical requirements inherent in online teaching will be very surprised at the many benefits of online college teaching jobs.
No comments:
Post a Comment