Academics have two choices in front of them and each choice leads to a different consequence. The adjunct instructors teaching in a physical college or university classroom on a physical campus and continuing doing what they’ve always done will receive the expected results, which are extremely low pay and absolutely no control over their own employment. The same traditional adjunct college faculty members can choose to learn why online college degree programs that offer students the accredited online masters degrees and accredited online bachelor degree are excellent sources of academic revenue. Of course, understanding why distance education technology is actually extremely advantageous to college teachers and, in fact, any teacher with an earned graduate degree, a Ph.D. or masters degree, takes as much work as actually applying for multiple online faculty positions. The first thing that has to happen is a stark realization of how the academic labor model has changed in the last few years. The administrators of the academy are no longer interested in employing full-time college teachers or secondary instructors because these administrators have discovered that it is entirely too expensive to make that sort of decades-long financial commitment. Instead, these academic administrators, many of whom are desperately afraid of losing their own incomes, are much more inclined to hire what could be termed academic entrepreneurs. The reason that academic entrepreneurs are so attractive to the administrators is because they take responsibility for their own economic lives and today making the commitment to understand how the economy works and why it is working the way that it is working says a lot about an intellectual. The alert academic who ponders this issue will quickly begin to understand that teaching online is the future of post-secondary academic instruction and that the spread of distance education technology cannot be stopped simply because many academics are unwilling to employ it to their benefit.
The aggressive academics, the online adjunct instructors with ten or more online college classes in an online teaching portfolio, demonstrate that they understand that the academic labor model will reward those who begin to work independent of the state apparatus. That is, a successful online adjunct instructor will learn as much as possible about why today’s university and college students are actually eager to earn from their personal computers a registered nursing degree online a business management degree online or by human resources degree online. Further, the online adjunct instructor that generates multiple online adjunct income streams will be the one that is satisfied with the high degree of personal and professional freedom from being able to teach for online degree programs from virtually any spot on the globe. While this may seem very romantic to traditional adjunct college professors who are anchored on traditional college or university campuses, the truth of the matter is that learning the time management skills required to coordinate that many online college courses will result from making the commitment to stay focused and learning how to navigate online degree programs located on the Internet. However, despite the learning curve inherent in making the transition from physical college, community college or university classroom to online degree programs that offer accredited online masters degrees and accredited online bachelor’s, the will to survive as an educator will separate the academics that will prosper with each passing semester for the academics that will not acquire the technical skills necessary to engage online college degree programs in a profitable and intellectually rewarding manner.