February 23, 2012

Understand the Ebb and Flows of Being an Adjunct College Professor

Teaching as an adjunct college professor these days requires intellectual moxie and willingness to adapt to unprecedented shifts in the academic labor market. Currently, a college adjunct instructor working in a physical university or college classroom is being paid peanuts for the large amounts of mental lifting necessary to instruct undergraduates. The reason the pay for each college class is so low is that the academic administrators figured out there are many more people with earned graduate degrees, a Ph.D. or a master’s degree, than are needed to teach all of the new and returning college students in the physical college and university classrooms. It is simply a flooded academic labor market, and the administrators, who are not complete fools, know this, but they also know that the for-profit colleges that award their student populations the bachelor s degree online and the online master degree have employed distance education technology so expertly that they are capturing large swaths of the enrolled college students. The for-profit colleges staff their teaching faculties with online adjunct instructors who, for the most part, understand there is much more to be earned by teaching online from a personal computer than there is by driving a broken-down vehicle between college and university campuses in a vain attempt to earn a decent living as a traditional adjunct college professor. The leap from down-at-the-heels adjunct college professor to flush-with-cash online adjunct instructor needs some motivation in the form of actual announcements for adjunct online teaching positions.

Online Professor of Marketing in the College of Business and Public Management

This online adjunct professor position is with the University of LaVerne. This position is entirely online and the online adjunct instructor will teach students enrolled in the Bachelor program in Business Administration and the Master in Business Administration program. All online courses are conducted using Blackboard. Candidates for this online teaching position most possess a Doctorate in Marketing and in-depth related experience in the profession.

Online Professor of Finance

This online faculty position requires a Doctorate in Finance and considerable professional experience in the field of finance. This position is with the University of LaVerne.

The best aspect of teaching online for accredited online college degree programs is that the new and returning college students actually embrace the opportunity to earn a health administration degree online, an online rn to bsn degree or an electrical engineering bachelor degree online using their personal computers and other digital communications devices. The for-profit colleges learned this lesson years ago and as a result are excellent post-secondary academic institutions to being teaching for an an online adjunct college professor because they employ so many online adjunct instructors that there is an almost endless number of adjunct online teaching jobs with them. Of course, as traditional community colleges, state colleges and four-year universities deploy more online college degree programs of their own in an attempt to salvage their costly physical plants, the college and university campuses, the numbers of online adjunct faculty teaching jobs will only grow in the future. The online adjunct income generated by an online teaching schedule filled with online college classes can offer hope even for a liberal arts major wondering how to survive as an adjunct English instructor by giving insight permitting an understanding the ebb and flow of being an adjunct college professor working for multiple online college degree programs.