The employment situation in public education is in the ditch because of budgetary cuts for faculty salaries. Granted, there are teachers going back into the physical classroom on the traditional campus this academic year, but for the vast majority of them the benefits they have enjoyed in the past will be diminished and the amount of work, which translates into the increased number of students in the individual classes, will increase, thus diminishing the already insufficient salaries paid to them by administrators. It would be somewhat unfair to place the responsibility of the literal defunding of public education on the shoulders of academic administrators simply because they are just as frightened as the teachers about the very real prospects of losing their positions, and their incomes, from the work they do on the large physical plants called campuses. That said, it is vitally important for any educators, teacher or administrators, with an earned graduate degree, a master degree or doctorate, to understand that the necessary monies to support the campuses and the classrooms on them is not coming back at all. Obviously, an alternative to teaching in the physical classroom is needed if there is any intention to continue earning a living form providing educational instruction to students at any level of the academy.
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.
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