There can be little doubt that there is an academic slump going on for public school educators at all levels of the academy. Traditional adjunct instructors working on physical college, university and community college campuses are barely hanging on, if at all, because there is no increase in the amount of pay for teaching the few available college classes, and secondary educators, from the high school level to the elementary level, are being laid off in mass numbers. Interestingly, adjunct online teaching opportunities can help educators with a graduate degree, a master’s degree or Ph.D., beat the academic slump by providing the chance to generate multiple online adjunct income streams throughout the entire year. Teachers with public schools that only have a bachelor degree can earn a graduate degree and also take advantage of the opportunities offered by the implementation of distance education technology by colleges and universities. The ease of offering online bachelor degree programs and online masters degree programs by academic administrators and the eagerness of post-secondary students to enroll in online degree programs leading to an engineering degree online, an online associate nursing degree or an online mba degree is creating the need for academics prepared to teach online college classes from their personal computers.
A well organized online adjunct instructor can coordinate the academic instruction and administrative tasks for six to ten online college courses from an inexpensive laptop computer located at practically any spot on the globe that offers access to the Internet. This inherent mobility is a genuine boon for any educator because it makes possible the freedom to move to and live in a less expensive area. The traditional adjunct college teacher can certainly appreciate the benefit of now having to physically travel to another traditional university or community college in order to land one or two more classes to teach each day. Of course, the traditional adjunct instructor that must drive a vehicle between campuses in order to try and earn a living from the delivery of post-secondary instruction soon discovers that most of the income from adjunct teaching goes for fuel and vehicle repairs, and the extra time spent simply traveling is time that never recovered for academic research and possible career advancement through peer-review publishing.
The alternative that is beckoning educators is an online teaching portfolio containing multiple online college classes with a variety of online college degree programs. Granted, it will take a considerable amount of determination and focus in order to build a full time online adjunct income, but it can be done over time and that income from online teaching is less vulnerable to dwindling budgetary funds from the public sector. After all, since there is no reason an online adjunct instructor can’t seek adjunct online teaching opportunities at colleges, universities, community colleges and for-profit colleges far distant from the location of the online instructor, the educator teaching online can simply use a personal computer to make an application for online adjunct positions at the thousands of post-secondary academic institutions that offer some form of distance education to their undergraduate and graduate students.