The amount of income that can be earned from teaching a single online college class or even three or four online college courses is important to consider, but what is even more interesting is that there are so many online degree programs now in place on the internet that it is possible to add or subtract online classes form the online teaching schedule based solely on the amount the pay the online adjunct instructor. For example, every post-secondary academic institution is now fully committed to employing distance education technology as a way replace expensive college and university classrooms. The result of this adoption of distance learning by academic administrators will be an infinitely expanding number of online faculty positions that must be filled by academically qualified and technically proficient online adjunct instructors. The alert educators will take advantage of this growing academic employment market by learning how to offer an intellectual and technical set of skills to the thousands of college and universities that need them.

The best approach to building an income from online adjunct instruction is to collect all the appropriate documents, graduate transcripts, letters of recommendation and a philosophy of teaching, in an electronic form so that they can be quickly and effortlessly submitted to the digital interface located in the application section of each academic website. Of course, given the bureaucratic hesitancy inherent in any state school such as university or community college, a delay can be expected when anticipating a positive response in the form of an invitation for a voice interview and inclusion in the mandatory training every new online instructor must complete. These delays should not slow down the application activities of an online college professor because it only after hundreds of applications for online teaching positions have been completed that there will be any online classes offered by one school or another.

After a few online classes are being taught, it will be time to evaluate each one in the light of the amount of money the college or university pays for the individual class and how much administrative activity is expected by the program leaders. For example, a traditional sixteen week class that pays fifteen hundred dollars will produce less weekly online adjunct income than a similar online class that lasts only six week. The best arrangement for the online instructor is to submit online faculty applications is to schools that offer six week online courses and replace the online classes that do not pay as well. There is also the issue of how much time the administrative tasks take each day. Some online degree programs requires constant interaction online with the enrolled students and some schools are satisfied to just have the online instructor answer the students’ questions about the individual assignments. The perfect mix for teaching online from the perspective of actually earning a living is a short time span for the class and a minimum of administrative tasks. Frankly, the intellectual requirements on both students and educators involved in distance learning programs is the same as that encountered in the physical classroom, but the control an online college professor has over the size of the online teaching schedule and the online adjunct income it generates is a far cry from the stress caused by waiting on the traditional campus for the next round of educator layoffs.

The effort to locate potential online faculty positions with online college degree programs is well worth ii since the only piece of equipment an prospective online adjunct instructor needs to do this is a personal computer and access to the Internet. Every post-secondary academic institution now has a website on the Internet, and on each school’s website is a link located on the front page that will lead the prospective online adjunct instructor to the faculty application section of the school’s site. Since there are over five thousand for-profit colleges, community colleges, state universities, four-year colleges and technical schools with distance education technology running right now, it would be very difficult if the right amount of effort is made to not acquire several online college courses to teach every day. The well-organized online adjunct instructor can easily coordinate an online teaching portfolio of eight to twelve online college courses with several online degree programs. After all, college students today find it very reasonable to use their computers to earn an online MBA degree, an online criminal Justice degree or an online master in teaching. Given these realities and the changes in the academic labor model, there really is no reason for any academic with a Ph.D. or masters degree in hand not to make the effort to find at least one accredited distance learning program to teach online for right now.

Teaching on an adjunct basis for schools that offer online bachelor degree programs and masters degree programs online to their students is more akin to being an independent contractor than it is to being a college professor. For example, most people with an earned graduate degree, a masters degree or a Ph.D., have been taught that being hired by a traditional school is the brass ring in terms of not having to look for another teaching position ever again; this is understandable since most of the professors teaching in graduate programs ten years ago probably did have a lifetime job. Therefore, it would have been impossible for these teachers to inform their students that if they wanted to actually earn a decent living in the coming years it would be vitally important to grasp the implications of distance education technology and the rising prominence of online college faculty positions with degree programs online.

With the current economy in a seeming free-fall, faculty budgets are being destroyed left and right, and the gloom now spread over the traditional campus environment it is encouraging to know that accredited online degree programs offering online accounting degree programs and an online bachelor degree in criminal justice, among many other university degrees online, are providing a strong ray of light and hope for not only college adjunct currently teaching but also for those who have recently lost their corporate positions. The little know aspect of distance education is that almost anyone with a graduate degree can learn how to find, apply for and teach new and returning colleges students trying to earn enough credits to qualify for an accredited degree online. Now that the situation has developed to the point that it is revealed to almost any adjunct instructor the way to earn a decent living that produces multiple paychecks is to engage in academic entrepreneurism on an active basis. Once the concept of engagement is understood it is a simple matter to put a plan of action into pay and begin landing multiple online adjunct jobs, each paying a specific amount of money that over the course of a year’s time can prove to be much more substantial than what it is possible to earn during the two long semesters that are traditional at most post-secondary academic institutions, with multiple online college programs.

Of course, as time goes on more and more people with graduate degrees will discover the personal freedom and economic independence of teaching college students enrolled in online education courses. Further, as the months go by and the corporate positions do not re-appear those who earned a masters degree or doctorate degree and did not go into the academy to teach immediately upon graduation will begin to figure out that online teaching opportunities with schools that offer an online teaching degree is full of students that need a competent online adjunct instructor in the online college class.

The way to start a serious search strategy for online college faculty positions is to visit the websites of the nearly five thousand community colleges, colleges and universities and for profit schools that offer their college populations a chance to earn a bachelor degree online or a master degree online from their personal computers at home. On the front page of each school’s website is a link that will take the prospective online adjunct instructor to a section of the site that will permit the submission of academic credentials. It should be understood that each school can design its own application interface, so the alert individual will have a resume, a cover letter and copies of unofficial graduate transcripts in hand before starting the application process. It is a very good idea to have these application documents in a document form that can be opened on any computer since there are many application interfaces that allow for document attachments. It should be understood by any online adjunct that it will be necessary to continually apply to schools that offer online bachelor degrees and masters degrees online because it may become necessary to stop teaching for one school and begin teaching online for another online degree program at another school because the circumstances change suddenly and without notice.

It is that sudden, unannounced change in an individual college’s or university’s teaching requirements or compensation amount that makes the professor versus business person attitude so very important. It is inescapable that any large organization, including post-secondary institutions of all size, are going through some very confusing times, and it is paramount that an online adjunct instructor be able to leap, if that is the appropriate word to use, from one online bachelor degree program to another online university program at the drop of a hat. The best defense is a good offence, as the saying goes, and in the world of distance education from the online adjunct perspective this is not only a truism but a valuable economic survival posture since there is no telling how the situation with accredited online degree programs will evolve over time. The only aspect of online college faculty positions that can be counted on is that they are growing now and will continue to grow in as a realistic way for someone with a graduate degree and a well developed time management skill set to make a sustainable living. It is important for any online adjunct instructor, whether he or she is actually engaged in teaching college students enrolled in online psychology degree programs or online business degree programs at the moment or is giving some serious thought to how comfortable it would be to earn multiple paychecks from a personal computer located in almost any spot on the globe, to fully realize that the competition for online adjunct employment is growing daily. The best way to overcome the competition for the available online faculty positions is to be proactive in the application process, which means making applications for these online adjunct job openings every day, and to learn how to market one’s intellectual and academic skill set with vigor and intelligence so that the greatest possible financial return for the effort to teach college students attending online college programs is maximized to the greatest possible extent.