The declining faculty budgets at traditional college and universities are playing havoc with the livings of college teachers working on an adjunct basis. In addition to the low pay for each class, there are more frequent mass firings at traditional schools these days as the costs of paying for maintenance and repair of the physical plants, the college and university campuses, spiral up until the post-secondary administrators fell they have no choice but to take as much as possible from the monies used to pay college adjunct instructors and apply them to the buildings and parking lots. This may seem counter-intuitive since student populations have not been larger since the middle of the last century. The underling strategy is to accommodate the educational demands and need of new and returning college students by offering them online bachelor degree programs and online masters degree programs in which to enroll. It is the growth of accredited online college degree programs that shows individuals with earned graduate degrees, a master’s or Ph.D., the road map to reliable teaching income with online adjunct employment.

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.