One of the most consistent complaints today about having an earned graduate degree, masters degree or Ph.D., is that there is no way to earn a decent living from teaching college and university students. Nothing could be further from the truth because distance education technology is making it possible for an educated person, someone who has earned a graduate degree, to earn a very nice living while at the same time gaining control over his or her personal economy. Of course, in order to do this the academic or prospective academic must learn how to teach online for a variety of online bachelor degree programs and online master degree programs that lead to accredited online university degrees. It is entirely possible that this particular career path has not occurred to the vast majority of academics while attempting and failing to earn a decent income by providing post-secondary educational instruction in a physical college classroom on a traditional university, community college or state college campus. Therefore, it is that time to disabuse those academics who are ready to give up teaching at the post-secondary level as a career because there is no money in it. Academic administrators are currently creating as many online college classes as possible in an attempt to save the physical plants known as college and university campuses. The reason these administrators are making the effort to make online college degree program available to as many new and returning college and university students as possible is that there simply is not enough budgetary money to pay the adjunct college faculty members a real wage and maintain the physical classrooms and the grounds that comprise the university campus. It really is a matter of choosing which is more valuable on the physical landscape, and it should come as no surprise that the adjunct college professors are losing in the exchange. The way to deal with this loss is not to quit teaching college and university students, but to learn how to use a personal computer to access online degree programs that are literally spilling over with college and university students earning an associate degree in accounting online, a business management degree online or hotel management degree online.

The hard reality is that post-secondary academic institutions are still not able to provide their student populations with a sufficient number of online college classes yet. This shortage of available online courses is being addressed every day by the academic administrators, and this means that there really is considerable opportunity available to academics who master the various digital interfaces on the Internet that make up the online degree programs. Granted, this is a radical departure from what was taught in graduate school, but it is something that must be addressed by the academic who is ready to change his or her career path in a way that simply was not available a decade ago. In effect, the academic with a graduate degree, classroom experience and the technical skill to use a computer to navigate the Internet has the chance to not only earn a living but to gain a level of personal and professional freedom that is foreign to college and university academics still stuck in the physical college and university classrooms. Make no mistake about it; the real reason to teach students’ earning various accredited online university degrees in online college degree programs is that it provides a real living from a laptop computer to the academics that make the effort to master the dynamics of distance education.

The definition of the best online universities for most underemployed traditional adjunct college faculty member are the ones that offer an alternative to teaching just a handful of college classes on physical college or university campus. The reason for this is that the vast majority of traditional adjunct instructors are hardly making what could be termed a decent living from the intellectual labor required to deliver post-secondary educational instruction. However, it is now possible to earn a full time living teaching online for colleges and universities by learning how to use a personal computer to access the various online bachelor degree programs and online master degree programs, which are now the preferred delivery vehicle for academic instruction at the post-secondary level of the academy. The for-profit colleges have employed large numbers of online adjunct instructors for the last five to seven years because they did not pay to be able with bureaucratic hesitancy at the state level. Now, the public community colleges, state colleges, four-year universities and technical schools are using the same distance education technology to reduce the impact on their budgetary funds cause of the high cost of building out and maintaining physical college university classrooms to meet the swelling numbers of new and returning college students.

The students themselves are quite eager to have the opportunity to earn an online master degree in education, an online bachelor of nursing degree or engineering degree online from their personal computers because these electronic devices are such an ordinary part of their lives. It stands to reason that the need on the part of the administrators to find a more cost-effective delivery system and the enthusiasm for new and returning college students have for using the Internet for educational purposes should result in more online adjunct faculty positions than ever before in academic history. This means that the traditional adjunct instructor that transitions out of physical college and university classrooms and into the various online college degree programs offered by the best online universities and colleges will have a genuine opportunity to develop an online teaching portfolio that can produce multiple online adjunct income streams each month of the year. There is no need for an educator with a graduate degree to struggle through the summer months without any college classes to teach. The vast majority of online degree programs offer classes throughout the calendar year.

For those teachers with a masters degree or a Ph.D. the best strategy possible for finding multiple online adjunct faculty job openings is to use a personal computer to navigate the Internet and go directly to the thousand of websites representing post-secondary academic institutions. It would actually be difficult or a prospective online adjunct instructor to locate a community college or state university or for-profit college that did not have at least a few openings for academically prepared and technically proficient online adjunct instructors willing to be trained how to coordinate the teaching duties and administrative responsibilities inherent in online teaching for online bachelor degree programs. It may take as long as a year or a college or university to respond to an application or online faculty positions by the new online adjunct instructor, but the effort will certainly pay off in the end in terms of being able to actually earn a realistic living.

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.

It is certainly difficult for any public school educator today to make a firm decision about how to move forward with the career path chosen after leaving graduate school. After all, it as if being a public school employee is actually a step backward since the state budgets needed to fund faculty salaries at colleges, high schools and elementary schools are drying up to a trickle. To be fair, as difficult as that may be with a pink slip or a reduced paycheck in hand, the academic administrators are beside themselves now as they attempt to pay for extremely expensive physical plants with the very few dollars arriving from the state coffers. If the administrators don’t figure out how to implement distance education technology they will soon be in possession of their own layoff notices and thin salaries. Happily, the technology that makes possible the quick implementation of online bachelor degree programs and online master’s degree programs that allow college and university students to earn criminal justice associate degree online, an online bachelor of nursing degree or an online psychology degree are being adopted by the thousands of post-secondary academic institutions. It is not to much of a stretch to think that an unemployed or underemployed academic with a graduate degree, or an academic with a bachelor degree willing to enroll in a graduate programs and earn a master’s degree or Ph.D., can step forward and earn a real living once again with online adjunct college teaching jobs.

The student populations at public post-secondary institutions are growing beyond all expectations as the general economy worsens with each passing year, and the school’s are in a real pickle, so to speak, since accommodating all those students in physical classrooms is simply unaffordable under the current budget constraints. This means that it is vitally important to offer as many online college classes, which are inexpensive in the extreme, and to have online adjunct instructors teaching those online college courses. It is at this juncture that the alert academic with a graduate degree sees the bridge between the traditional college and university campus and the emerging online college degree programs.

Each online course within an online degree program requires an academically qualified and technically adroit online adjunct instructor to teach it. This one element of distance education provides a very real opening for a teacher to build a full time online teaching portfolio containing numerous employment opportunities for teaching jobs online if the prospective online adjunct instructor demonstrates the energy to deploy a rotational online faculty application strategy. This strategy requires the educator trying to transition out of the physical classroom to make dozens of applications for online adjunct college teaching jobs each day. The best way to do this is to visit the websites of the thousands of for-profit colleges, state colleges, four-year universities, community colleges and technical schools and start collecting the information from each of them necessary for submitting applications until a positive response is sent to the prospective online adjunct. While it may take some time to actually earn a full time online adjunct income from online teaching, it is well worth the effort.

The academic labor field is hardly what could be called even these days as a result of the dwindling faculty budget funds. In that regard, it is important to point out that there are alternatives for underemployed academics, traditional adjunct college faculty members, and unemployed educators at the secondary and below levels. Distance education technology makes is extremely easy for academic administrators to deploy online bachelor degree programs and online master’s degree programs that can replace the need to build out and maintain expensive college classrooms because the online college classes within the online degree programs can be accessed using a personal computer. This is very good news for administrators, college and university students and prospective online adjunct instructors needing to earn a decent living now that the public education faculty positions are disappearing due to reduced funding from the state budgets. The academic administers required to meet the educational demands of college, university and community college students are busily implementing online college degree programs as a vehicle for the delivery of post-secondary instruction because having the curriculum on a computer hard drive available all day and all night long is economically preferable to constantly trying to find budget funds to maintain the classrooms that have served as vehicles for the instruction delivery in the past. To sum it up, physical plants such as college and university campuses are no longer cost-effective or cost-efficient for the schools.

More to the point, the students now enrolling in community colleges, state colleges and four-year universities actually want to earn an online bachelor of nursing degree, an elementary education degree online or an engineering degree online from home or at work by using their personal computers to access the online college degree programs and advance their educations. These post-secondary students want the same ease of access to community college online courses enjoyed by students attending for-profit colleges that have enjoyed the advantages offered by distance education technology for the last decade. With the passing of each semester, the number of college and university students enrolled in accredited distance learning programs will grow dramatically simply because the public schools will begin to catch up with the for-profit colleges in terms of the variety of online degree programs offered to the incoming college students. This academic development, the emergence of online degree programs for practically every area of post-secondary study, is extremely good news for academic with an earned graduate degree, a Ph.D. or master’s degree, or the academic with a bachelor degree that is willing to invest the time and money into a graduate program.

Once the decision is made to develop a full time online teaching schedule that will generate multiple online adjunct income streams throughout the year the next activity is to start applying for online adjunct positions in criminal justice and online adjunct English instructor employment, to name just two area of post secondary instruction that has a great need to academically qualified and technically adroit online adjunct instructors to teach the growing number of online courses. The best application strategy for identifying online adjunct job opportunities is to visit the websites of the thousands of community colleges and state colleges and following the link on the front page of the school’s site that leads to the faculty application section.

Teaching has never been an easy task, and that task is now made harder by the completely and partial loss of income from public education positions. The difficulty of finding a way to earn a decent living, a real living, from the delivery of instruction is now requiring new thinking on the part of academic. For example, it is no longer possible to apply for positions as a full time public teacher position at a public high school, college, university or community college and expect to continue working in that state-funded position for decades. Today, it is absolutely necessary to respond to the teacher layoffs and the economically terminal conditions traditional adjunct college faculty members work under every day in an entirely new way that does not incorporate the assumption that there is any dependability in working for the state college or four-year university that is subject to a thinning trickle of operating monies. The more efficient approach to teaching is to become an online adjunct instructor for the many online bachelor degree programs and online master’s degree programs. By doing this the academic with an earned graduate degree, a master’s degree or Ph.D., can transform from an underemployed or unemployed public school teacher to an academic entrepreneur with a full time online teaching portfolio containing multiple online college courses.

Of course, a public school teacher can always hope that the golden period of public teaching returns in the distant future, but in the meantime it will be a better application of the graduate degree that was so hard to earn than waiting idly for the faculty budgets to swell again and academic salaries to bloom. An alert, aggressive prospective online adjunct instructor can develop a rotational online college faculty positions application schedule that will produce results if diligently employed on a consistent basis. There are literally thousands of community colleges, state colleges, for-profit colleges, technical schools and four-year universities that are moving quickly to place their entire curriculum on the Internet in the form of online degree programs that can be enrolled in and attended from a personal computer. The new college students actually want to earn an online computer science degree, an online business administration degree or a health administration degree online. The academic administrators are more than happy to accommodate the students’ desires for even more online classes they can enroll in each semester.

The best way to identify online teaching programs that have a genuine need for online adjunct instructor to teach their growing list of online college degree programs is to learn how to use a computer to access the Internet and visit the websites of these schools. Once at the school’s site it is important to find the link on the front page that will lead to the faculty application section. Once in that section of the college or university website it is relatively easy to submit the appropriate academic credentials and evidence of classroom experience. While the online faculty application process requires organization and focus, it is much better than waiting to be rescued by state funds.

Any career academic at any level of the academy should give immediate attention to the effort required to join an online university faculty. The academic landscape at every level is under tremendous pressure to do more with less, so to speak, and distance education technology is the key to meeting the educational needs of students without the burden of expensive physical campuses impacting diminishing budgets. This is especially true at the post-secondary academic level, which is why unemployed educators with an earned graduate degree, a master’s degree or Ph.D., should start applying for online faculty positions as soon as possible. It is easy to observe the growth in the number of online bachelor degree programs and online master’s degree programs simply by using a personal computer to access the Internet. It is in the act of observing the rise of online college degree programs that the teacher needing to earn an actual living from the delivery of post-secondary instruction can begin to achieve that goal. Every one of the online college courses within an online degree programs must have a qualified online adjunct instructor teaching it in order to satisfy the various accreditation boards.

There are two primary reasons a teacher with a graduate degree, or a teacher with a bachelor degree willing to commit the time and money to earn a master’s degree or Ph.D., should strive to join an online university faculty with a variety of state colleges, four-year universities, community colleges and for-profit colleges. The first is that the academic administrators of these post-secondary schools admire how cost-efficient accredited distance learning programs are when compared to the extremely expensive traditional university and college campuses and the classrooms that reside on them. There is no getting around the reality that providing online college classes that lead to a library science degree online, an online accounting degree or an online masters degree in school counseling on the Internet is much less expensive than trying to build out and maintain physical university classrooms to accommodate the swelling student populations. Additionally, the new and returning college and university students are quite ready to accept the idea of attending an accredited online master degree program from their computers at home and at work. This shouldn’t be surprising since a laptop and access to the Internet is considerably less expensive than driving to a remote physical campus in a motor vehicle and then driving back to work or home after a long lecture in a drafty college or university classroom.

The educator can take advantage of this confluence of circumstances by learning how to use a computer to navigate the Internet to the thousands of academic websites representing post-secondary institutions. On the first page of each college or university website is a link that will take the prospective online adjunct instructor to a section of the site that is designed to accept academic credentials and evidence of classroom experience. The fact that needs to be faced immediately by teachers is that there will probably be no return to the physical classroom. The future of earning a living from delivering post-secondary academic instruction will be found in the emergence of the online university faculty.

There doesn’t seem to be any stopping the layoffs in public education, so it is time for teachers at all levels of the academy to ferret out online teaching opportunities and learn how they can provide a great measure of personal and professional control over the economic turmoil of modern academic life. A teacher with a earned graduate degree, a master’s degree or Ph.D., and classroom experience should consider at length the impact of distance education technology on the delivery of post-secondary instruction and those intellectuals that deliver it to college and university students. The reality is that an online adjunct instructor teaching for a variety of online bachelor degree programs and online master’s degree programs can exercise much more immediate control over the income generated from teaching online that is currently possible in a physical classroom. In the case of traditional adjunct college and university faculty members, it is virtually impossible to increase the monies from post-secondary teaching unless there are several more community colleges or universities within driving distance of the original academic institution. A traditional adjunct instructor literally must be able to drive a motor vehicle to another school in order to earn any cash by teaching college and university students enrolled in that extra school. The same adjunct professor that transitional into online college degree programs and transforms into an online adjunct instructor does not even need to physically arrive on the campus of a physical college in order to teach the students enrolled in the online college courses offered by the school.

The same holds true for educators at the secondary level. The administrators seem determined to empty the physical classrooms forever and thoroughly, so those finding themselves without employment can also transition into online degree programs provided an earned graduate degree is in hand at the time the applications for online faculty positions are made at the websites of the colleges and universities. For those teachers possessing only a bachelor degree, it is well worth the time and expense to enroll in an online master degree program and obtain the required academic credentials to teach at the post-secondary level.

Any analysis of the current enthusiasm new and returning college and university students have for accredited distance learning programs will immediately revel a growing profusion of jobs teaching online college classes. The availability of the opportunity to earn online degrees for military, an online bachelor of nursing degree or an online it degree simply by accessing the Internet from a personal computer is quite attractive to today’s post-secondary student, and it is just as attractive to the academic administrators seeking feverishly an instructional delivery vehicle that is far less expensive to deploy and maintain than the traditional physical college classroom at the campus on which it sits. In the end, teaching online is the future of education and the teachers that recognize the benefits of participating in its growth will certainly enjoy the mobility and online adjunct income streams it offers those willing to master the use of a personal computer and learn how to navigate the Internet in an efficient fashion. The time for educators to seize online teaching opportunities is now, and the potential for a long online teaching career is such that it represents a distinctly more prosperous alternative for a career in education than attempting to remain in the physical college and university classroom.

Thousands of public school teachers across America have been laid off. Nevertheless, if high school or elementary teachers have a master’s degree, they can find faculty online positions are a real and reliable alternative to being unemployed for long periods of time. They may never have thought of teaching online for online bachelor degree programs and online masters degree programs. The same holds true for traditional adjunct college teachers. They may have taught as traditional adjuncts and think of themselves as scholars, not nerds. The truth is that it is to their advantage to reconsider online teaching. However, for them to see these advantages, they must overcome certain popular myths in regard to online teaching. It is even more imperative that they overcome these myths if they have been laid off.

The cardinal and most egregious myth is that online teaching does not pay as well as teaching an on-the-ground course in a physical classroom. In a word, this belief is simply false. In fact, online teaching pays more than on-the-ground teaching, at least twice the amount of the traditional modes of organization. Do the math. A traditional academic semester runs for about sixteen weeks. A comparable semester, taught in an online format, runs for seven and a half weeks. The online courses run back to back with no breaks except for Christmas holidays. Still, one makes twice the money in the online system per unit time.

Some assume that payment from an online college degree program. In fact, the pay is electronically deposited in the instructor’s checking or savings account and comes in like clockwork. Take the time to interview those who are teaching online before holding to the belief that online degree programs are unreliable.
Some assume that they are not skilled enough to navigate the online systems. However, if they have the minimal skills of word processing, they have sufficient skills. This is so because the platform and navigation system will be taught them in the training one takes before they teach their first course. Some schools even pay the trainee while in training. After the applicants finish training, they will be paired with a mentor who shadows them in their first few courses taught.

Some laid off academics think that online adjunct jobs are a watered down version of the “real thing.” They have taught composition in college for twenty years and now they have been laid off. They not only think that online instruction is inferior to face to face instruction, but they often make a claim that such teaching is unethical. They may think that the students enrolled on online college courses are not getting their money’s worth. For these reasons, they prefer being unemployed rather than explore the opportunities of online instruction. In actual fact, graduates from online colleges obtain the same rate of employment than graduates from a traditional school. The instruction is superior if one factors in the multiple mode of evaluation required in online schools. For example, a typical student in an online class setting would be required to write research essays fully documented, complete objective tests, participate in discussion threads, work on projects and present the projects as a team endeavor, make use of Ask the Professor for clarification purposes, make use of the broad range of tutorials available, show knowledge of APA documentation, show knowledge and application of the various websites that help identify plagiarism, show original navigation strategies in obtaining research data, perform demonstration micro teaching. This is hardly a watered down curriculum. Moreover, specific criteria are set for each of the above competencies. A rubric defines the learning goals and a procedure for remediation is in place for those who do not meet minimal standards.

Another popular myth is that online classes are cold, without feeling or spirit. Facts contradict this view. For example, the students can informally meet in their own lounge and this is not graded. The premise is that ungraded sharing will lead to bonding and the bonding will provide a support system for the rest of their professional life. The students can access the instructor at any time of the day or night via email, via Ask the Professor and through private conferences. Even visual meetings via video conferencing are possible. Moreover, most of the activities in online courses are interactive, not passive. The interactive modes of problem solving lead to higher levels of critical thinking and bonding. Students open to one another in amazing ways.

A final myth which causes potential online instructors to shy away from investigating faculty online positions is the assumption that because there are complicated technical tasks to be performed, more time must be expended on these curriculum organizations. The opposite is true. For example, in the traditional course, it is necessary to take attendance at the beginning of each session. This takes time and creates an atmosphere that is not conducive to learning. In the online system, the attendance is electronically registered when the student signs in for the class. Most of the system components are like this. They are designed to increase efficiency, not the other way around.

Like it or not, the academy at all levels is undergoing tremendous changes and they have to be confronted by academics still needing to earn a living. Of course, traditional adjunct college instructors are not surprised by these developments since they have been falling further and further behind each semester as a result of the administrators realizing that there is no real reason to pay adjunct professors in physical college and university classrooms anything approaching a living wage. Now, educators at the secondary level and below, many of who have earned graduate degrees, are being let go in massive numbers. In both cases, the bright spot on the academic horizon is that online adjunct instructor positions are up for grabs. This many sound like bold talk to a lot of intellectuals that have depended on a steady public education pay check for decades, but the experienced traditional adjunct college teacher know all too well that the post-secondary level of the academy is populated primarily by low paid, temporarily employed academics that are limited to teaching at the few physical campuses within driving distance of each other. However, distance education technology is being employed by the thousands of colleges, universities, community colleges and for-profit colleges because it is much less expensive to deliver instruction to college and university students from a computer server than it is to deliver the same instruction for college and university students in a physical structure located on a traditional campus.

The presence of online bachelor degree programs and online masters degree programs is both deep and wide today, but while the distribution of online college degree programs such as these by academic administrations is of great benefit to the economic life of the schools themselves and they are a real boon to college and university students that would rather use their personal computers and the Internet to earn an online degree instead of driving a motor vehicle to a remote physical campus for the same purpose, they create a genuine need for trainable, academically and technically prepared online adjunct instructor to fill the growing numbers of online adjunct instructor positions. After all, teachers have to teach the online college classes and the college and university students enrolled in them in order to earn an online masters degree in education, a criminal justice associate degree online or an online bachelor of nursing degree.

The academic with a Ph.D. or master’s degree that want to either return to the classroom or the traditional adjunct instructor that want to begin earning an actual living form the intellectual effort required to teach college and university students should immediately start applying to teach for online bachelor degree programs. The online adjunct psychology jobs, online adjunct English instructor positions and online adjunct criminal justice jobs are really out there and an online teaching portfolio with five to ten online college courses in it can pay handsomely throughout the entire calendar year. Make no mistake that the future of post-secondary teaching is on the Internet in online degree programs and the alert, aggressive instructor can certainly revive a flagging academic career by making as many online faculty applications as possible every day.