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 it should be easy for an intellectual with a sense of the educational trends to observe that these non-traditional college and university students would prefer to earn a college degree from their personal computers at home or at work simply because it is less stressful on their time and physical energy than having to drive a motor vehicle to a remote college or university campus and sit for long periods of time listening to a lecture in a drafty physical classroom, and then having to retrace their steps in order to return home to prepare meals and wash clothes or go back to work at a job. Further, the advantages students perceive online college degree programs provide them can also benefit academics wishing to discover a way to develop a hedge against the distinct possibility of additional reductions in the traditional teacher workforce. In fact, an investigation of the evolving application of distance education technology might lead a teacher to decide that teaching college students from a personal computer in practically any spot in the world is preferable to remaining in what appears to be a failing physical educational environment. It could be that it occurs to an academic with a graduate degree or an academic with a bachelor degree willing to complete the course work required to earn a master degree that online teaching positions are actually a very attractive alternative to continuing to teaching in a physical classroom on a traditional campus.

Overall, the primary benefit of teaching online is the ability to work in any geographic location that affords the online adjunct instructor access to the Internet. The reason for this enhanced mobility is that all the academic interaction between the students enrolled in online college courses and the online adjunct instructors that teach them takes place on the Internet. Further, it is possible today for an online degree programs to pay the online instructors regardless of the physical location of the online teaching professional. It is also quite important for prospective online instructors to note that it is not necessary to drive to and from a physical college or university campus every day in order to earn a living from teaching. Given the rise in prices for fuel and the decline in salaries for educators in public schools this lack of any need to spend money on transportation is significant in many ways.

It may be difficult for an educators anchored in one town or city to imagine exactly how online teaching can provide mobility. After all, it is difficult envision a new lifestyle since decades of repetition often blur the vision of a different way of teaching. It is possible for an online college professor to tuck an inexpensive laptop computer under the arm, fly to another country and resume teaching upon landing in the new destination. This travel can be engaged in on any day of the week, and with the availability of wireless networks in airport lounges and waiting area it is even possible to teach online courses during layovers. This is an unprecedented state of affairs for teachers. However, as each academic year ends and another begins the opportunity to earn a full time living or a part time living from teaching online becomes more viable.

The amount that can be earned from online teaching for post-secondary academic institutions varies according to the online adjunct instructor’s technical skills and the commitment to finding the online college courses that generate the greatest amount of online adjunct income for the effort required by the community college or for-profit college. The optimal formula for determining the income value of a given online class is the length of the class and how much the school pays the online adjunct to teach the class. For example, an online courses that lasts only eight weeks and pay eighteen hundred dollars will generate more weekly online teaching income than an online course that pay the same amount for sixteen weeks of instruction. This may seem obvious at first, but it very important to evaluate each online course in the online teaching schedule by the same measurements. After all, an educators needs to earn a living to survive and in this day and age that living needs to be worth the time and intellectual effort required to obtain it. Ultimately, teaching online is more about academic entrepreneurship than it is about having a teaching job.

Unfortunately, this entrepreneurial aspect of online teaching for online college degree programs is simply not part of the course of study in graduate school. This lack of information about how to actually earn a living from teaching leaves many academic today without any direction to turn once the income the traditional academic work goes missing after a massive layoff. To remedy this lack of knowledge it is necessary to come to grips with the current academic employment landscape and to understand how the changes in academic labor are now impact the reconfiguration of the academic labor model. First, there is no genuine will to continue funding traditional academic positions at any level of the academy. In the past, a competent educator could expect to work on one campus for decades and then retire with a healthy pension. That is no long the case for the most part. Today, college and university administrators want to hire academics on a part time basis to teach for a fixed sum of money for each individual online class, and these administrators are quite sure that distance education technology is much less expensive to use as a primary vehicle for the delivery of educational instruction than the physical classroom that has been in use for many years. To put a fine point on it, the online adjunct instructor coordinating an online teaching schedule populated with a variety of carefully chosen online faculty positions is the academic labor model that is now being presented to academics with graduate degrees as the academic labor model of the moment and of the future.

Fortunately, distance education technology has matured to the point that it is possible to supply college and university students with a wide variety of online bachelor degree programs and online master degree programs that they can participate in from their personal computers at home and at work. The speed at which online college classes are appearing each academic semester is almost impossible to measure simply because the drive to create them is being fueled by the need to meet the educational needs of swelling students populations with fewer budgetary dollars, and the administrators at community colleges, state universities, four-year state colleges, technical schools and four-profit colleges know full well that their incomes depend on figuring out how to provide online college degree programs in practically every academic discipline as soon as possible without asking for additional physical space in which to teach them. The alternative, therefore, of directing enrolled students into online degree programs is extremely attractive because there is literally no limit to how many online college classes can be fielded every semester and eventually the cost of these online programs is substantially less than the traditional classroom since computer servers do not need the level of maintenance a physical building and the grounds around them need every day.

Even with this emerging shift in the academic labor model, which is occurring as a direct result of the same economic issues that are changing how college and university students earn an academic degree, in the faces of educators with decades of classroom experience, there is still far too little recognition of just how to harness distance education as a way to make a real living. Basically, if an educator with a modest level of computer skill can learn to navigate the Internet efficiently enough to quickly locate the faculty application section of the thousands of post-secondary academic websites it is possible to submit evidence of classroom experience and academic achievement. Of course, it will be necessary to submit online faculty application materials dozens of times a day for weeks on end, but this activity will eventually generate at least a few invitations to participate in a telephone interview and the mandatory training every new online adjunct instructor must successfully complete before being placed in an online class. While making all of these applications for online faculty positions may seem like an enormous amount of work in the beginning, it will bear fruit later as the online teaching schedule begins to fill out and the analysis period begins to become a significant part of an online teaching career.

An online teaching schedule can be populated with multiple online adjunct jobs. It is possible for a technically adroit online adjunct instructor to manage a dozen online college classes at one time. Alternately, it is possible to teach online part time for one or two online bachelor degree programs while continuing to teach in a physical classroom. In both cases, the online adjunct instructor needs to learn how to analyze the individual online university classes from the perspective of the educators, not the community college or for-profit college. The individual online courses should be examined in terms of how much it pays and how much administrative work is required by the online degree program. For example, a six week course that pays the online instructor a flat fee of two thousand dollars is more profitable than a similar course that last the traditional sixteen weeks and pays the same amount. The goal any online college professor should pursue is to acquire any many online classes as possible that pay the most money for the teaching involved and the associated administrative tasks required for each student. This analysis should begin with the first online courses an academic teaches from a computer.

Naturally, before an educator can teach online for online bachelor degree programs or online master degree programs, it is first necessary to find the place to make applications for online adjunct instructor jobs with the thousands of post-secondary academic institutions. While there are several academic employment websites that daily provide information about available online teaching jobs, a more efficient and effective approach is to contact he schools directly and make an application in the faculty application section of the site. It is fairly easy to locate the faculty application section because each academic website has an identifiable link on the first page that leads to the section that will accept academic credentials. Once the link named employment, jobs or faculty position has been accessed the application sections will be gained, and there will be considerable information about the different areas of study in the school schedule that are already being offered in the form of online degree programs. It is important to understand that every academic discipline that can be offered in the form of an online college degree programs will eventually be deployed by academic administrators.

The alert, prospective online adjunct instructor will continue to submit online faculty applications to community colleges, state universities and for-profit colleges until an invitation is received to attend the training program. Then, after a few online classes are in the online teaching schedule the online college professor should continue to submit applications to teach online to additional colleges and universities. After all, the best way to analyze an ongoing class in an online college degree program is to have several more to use as a system of comparison.

The budgetary funds needed to pay traditional faculty salaries seem to continue to decrease with each passing academic year. The academic with a master degree or Ph.D. needs to recognize the benefits of being able to continue teaching at the post-secondary level of the academy in the event that the salary earned from teaching in the physical classroom on the traditional campus disappears during the next round of budget cuts.

In order to do this it is necessary to learn how to use a personal computer effectively in the search for online degree programs that offer online adjunct jobs to qualified college teachers. While the numbers of online adjunct jobs grows daily, the competition for those jobs increases in tandem. As more and more traditional college teachers come to the realization that they will continue to live in poverty if they do not start teaching online the individual college teachers who do not understand that academic entrepreneurship is absolutely necessary we left behind to join the long gray line of the unemployed.

If that sounds harsh, it is because the reality of employment at the postsecondary level is changing in ways that simply could not be imagined a decade ago. The simple economic fact is that traditional colleges and universities are broke, and the college and university administrators have no hesitation in engaging in mass layoffs of adjunct faculty members in order to retain the little cash that is left in the budget to operate the physical plants known as college and university campuses. Therefore, it is wise for a college instructor to strike while the iron is hot, so to speak, and start immediately applying for online faculty positions at the thousands of colleges, universities and community colleges that offer their student populations and opportunity to learn an online degree.

On a positive note, new and returning college students are more than happy to have the opportunity to earn an online accounting degree, a online registered nurse degree or an online social work degree from their personal computers at home and work. This means that online adjunct instructors who pursue the application process on a daily basis will have a growing marketplace to which they can sell their academic and technical expertise. The bottom line is that the colleges and universities actually need individuals with earned graduate degrees, a master’s degree or PhD, to teach the multiple online college classes they offer their students.

One of the major benefits of teaching online is that it is possible to carry the online college classes and the various online college degree programs to any geographic location because all the academic work required to earn an online degree in to teach the course material in the online college classes is on the Internet. The time is now to start earning a healthy online adjunct income by teaching online college courses for online university degree programs.

A solid, focused search strategy is necessary in order to acquire enough online faculty positions to teach for in order to generate a full time online adjunct income. The for-profit colleges that award their students the bachelors degree online and the online master degree are excellent markets for prospective online adjunct instructors because they have considerable success with distance education technology. Additionally, traditional colleges and universities are attempting to catch up with the for-profit schools by developing and offering their own online college degree programs, which will dramatically increase the numbers of online college courses that will need an online adjunct instructor to teach them.

Of course, the dire budgetary circumstances at the traditional post-secondary academic institutions are creating a great deal of competition for the chance to teach online college classes as a result of the large numbers of people with earned graduate degrees seeking to earn a decent living by teaching online. Fortunately, new and returning college students are quick to enroll in online degree programs that provide them with the opportunity to earn online elementary teaching degrees, an online special education degree or an online masters degree in education, so the openings for those with the academic credentials and technical skills required to successfully navigate in and out of online college courses on a daily basis grows exponentially as time goes on.

A rotational application schedule is necessary to land multiple online adjunct faculty positions with a variety of online degree programs. Submitting academic credentials day after day to the same college or university may seem boring as an intellectual activity, but it is a necessary practice to overcome the other applications being submitted by the tens of thousands of people with graduate degrees who can’t find employment elsewhere. A strong resolve to become a full time online adjunct instructor and a laser-focused search strategy to unearth new online college degree programs will certainly go a long way to building a reliable teaching income with online adjunct employment.

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.

Online adjunct Instructor participation in discussion forums

Timely grading of course work

Counting attendance of online adjuncts at teleconferences

Developing In-service training modules for delivery to online adjuncts

Compiling and coordinating reports about online student performance

Interviewing and training online adjunct Instructors

Online Faculty Positions Are Portable

In addition, landing and maintaining an online faculty position will probably include teaching online classes in addition to overseeing a number of online adjuncts. Given all of this activity, it might be a good idea to decide how much you can take on. At the same time, having an online faculty position can certainly provide you with full time work. Overall, the job can be quite engaging for those with well-honed time management skills, and there is certainly the prospect of a full time paycheck with benefits, but the amount of work will be high and there will not be any let up since anyone who can not stand the pace can easily be replaced by another seeking one of the growing number of online faculty positions. The best advice if you are seeking this situation is to ask yourself if the portability of the work is something that is attractive; this job, online faculty positions, can be accomplished from anywhere at any time.