Teaching as a career path has always been a challenge for the educated individual with a graduate degree. In the past, the students never disappeared but the income from working on a traditional academic campus was ever luxurious by any standard. However, the teaching work could be counted as dependable with those that earned the academic credentials and accepted the inevitability of having to paint modest amount of pay with a sense of a higher calling: the life of the mind, so to speak. Today, however the massive layoffs of educators in public education and the low pay for traditional adjunct instructors at physical colleges, universities and community colleges is leading to serious problems for the teacher that cannot be covered up any longer. There is a bright light on the academic horizon, however, and it is being created by distance education technology. It is much easier for academic administrators to create online bachelor degree programs and online master’s degree programs than it is to build and maintain physical college and university classrooms to meet the educational needs of new and returning college students. At the same time, the college, university, community college and technical school students would much rather enroll in and attend online college classes from their personal computers at home and at work than to have to drive an expensive vehicle to a college campus at the edge of town and sit in a drafty classroom for hours only to have to drive that same expensive vehicle back home or back to the office. This emergence of online college degree programs is highly beneficial to educators with a Ph.D. or master’s degree, or those with a bachelor degree willing to earn a graduate degree, that search for online adjunct employment as a way to earn a decent living from the delivery of post-secondary instruction.
The aggressive academic that learns how to use an inexpensive laptop computer can start applying for online adjunct college teaching jobs by visiting the website of the thousands of post-secondary academic institutions. One very good source of online adjunct employment is the numerous for-profit colleges. These academic institutions have learned that offering their student populations an online business administration degree, an online masters degree in school counseling or an online bachelor degree in accounting is good for the academic institution and the students. Of course, the numerous online college courses within the online degree programs requires a competent online adjunct instructor with an earned graduate degree in the appropriate subject area and computer skills that permit easy entrance and exit of various digital interfaces used by the schools.
While the academic labor model is going through radical changes as a result of the budget decreases for teacher salaries in public education, the numbers of online adjunct jobs with online college degree programs are growing daily as administrators at public college and universities deploy ever more online college courses. The simple truth of the matter is that there will be no return to the physical classroom for most educators now seeking to rebuild their intellectual careers, so it is especially important to understand that online adjunct employment can fix the academic problem in a very positive fashion.
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