May 18, 2012

Cope with Possible Teacher Layoffs by Teaching Online

In an employment situation that simply doesn’t seem to improve it is very important to career employ coping mechanisms as a way to maintain professional balance. One very good way for an academic to maintain career equilibrium is to start acquiring faculty online positions with post-secondary academic institutions. The fact is that state colleges, four-year universities, technical schools and community colleges are quickly making more online degree programs filled with online courses available to their enrolled students. The accreditation boards that govern these post-secondary institutions insist that academically qualified and technically prepared online adjunct instructors teach the online courses. This means that there is a growing number of online teaching opportunities being created each academic semester and the alert academic can start applying for them right now. The most productive way to apply for an online adjunct job is to use a personal computer to navigate the Internet to the school’s website. There are over five thousand post-secondary schools that already offer their college and university students a chance to earn an online college degree and as the popularity of distance education grows the numbers of online classes increase in proportion. As more experience is gained by the online college professor, the more able the teacher with knowledge of how to find and apply for online teaching jobs will be able to cope successfully with possible public education budget reductions.

It is time for educators with earned graduate degrees, a doctorate or master’s degree, to contemplate the advantages of teaching online as a serious career strategy. After all, the budget cuts in public education are making the physical classroom on the traditional campus a rather undependable place for a teacher to work every day. Fortunately, distance education technology makes it possible to continue teaching for a living and overcome the uncertainty now associated with a single income from a single source. An online teaching schedule can generate multiple online adjunct income streams that can be individually replaced simply by applying for additional faculty positions teaching online classes with online bachelor degree programs and online master’s degree programs. The best way to start acquiring online college courses to teach is to learn how a personal computer can access the Internet in order to navigate to the community college, state university, for-profit college, state college and technical school websites. On the front page of each of the sites is a link that will lead to the faculty application section, which is arranged on purpose to allow the easy submission of academic credentials and classroom experience. As the cost difference between delivering post-secondary instruction on the Internet and delivering it in a physical classroom become more visible to academic administrators the numbers of online courses that need prepared online adjuncts to teach them will grow in a dramatic fashion.

Any educators recently impacted by the budget cuts and subsequent teacher layoffs should know that an ambitious academic can locate a treasury of online classes. The primary difference between teaching in a physical classroom on a physical campus and teaching eight to ten online college courses is that the single income from the one traditional teaching venue can be withdrawn suddenly while the online adjunct income from one of the online degree programs in the online schedule can be quickly replace with multiple online courses. The reason this scenario is available to any educator with an earned graduate degree, a Ph.D. or master’s degree, is because there are over five thousand post-secondary academic institutions currently offering their enrolled students some measure of online learning at this moment. In terms of a career strategy that will generate sufficient income to continue teaching the daily pursuit of an online faculty opening with the many online college degree programs is definably productive. After all, the evaporation of monies required to pay traditional faculty salaries is continuing to disappear so it would very prudent for an academic with the appropriate level of academic achievement required to teach college, university and community college students to pay close attention to the development of distance education technology. There can no longer be any legitimate argument about the value of teaching online for a consistent academic income. The simple reality is that the growth of online college degree programs at the thousands of community colleges, for-profit colleges, state colleges and four-year universities is accelerating rapidly as the cost-efficiency of online college courses becomes apparent to both academic administrators and college and university students. This same revelation about how online adjunct employment can benefit every academic with a graduate degree, which the level of academic achievement required to teach students at post-secondary institutions, should spur an interest in building an online teaching schedule. Each online college course an online adjunct instructor teaches pays a specific amount over the length of the online class. It is easy to see that teaching eight online courses that pay fifteen hundred dollars each and last on average eight weeks can generate an income that will certainly be appreciated by a teacher constantly worried about the prospects of altogether losing the salary earned by teaching in a single classroom. Ultimately, the biggest benefit of making the effort to teach online is the income hedge it provides as a result of multiple teaching opportunities. Many educators with the appropriate academic credentials, a master degree or Ph.D., are thwarted in their effort to acquire an online teaching schedule because they are unable to concentrate on the search process. First, the effort to land five to eight online college courses to teach each day requires a focus on submitting applications on a rotational basis. This means that the prospective online adjunct college professor must continually apply to an individual community college, for-profit college, state university or technical college until a positive response is received in the form of an invitation to participate in the mandatory training. The reason it is vitally important to make multiple applications to the same online degree programs is that it may take as long as a year for the individual school to respond to an inquiry about an online faculty opening in a particular area of academic study. Granted, this inevitable period of waiting can be quite frustrating for many educators needing solutions to lost income as quickly as possible, but patience is truly a virtue in this case. The academic applying focus to the search for available online faculty positions will be eventually rewarded by enough online courses to teach that it will be possible to evaluate the remuneration for online teaching in terms of expected intellectual input and to make adjustments based on desired results.

The current state of the academic employment landscape in public education is charged with economic damages which can cause an educator in a physical classroom on a traditional campus to assume a defensive professional posture. The problem with this posture is how to transform it into an intellectual activity that actually provide a reasonable defense of the income from academic work, and the first and best answer that leaps to mind is online adjunct jobs with accredited online bachelor degree programs and accredited master degree programs. Distance education technology is being embraced by both academic administrators and university students as a way to engage post-secondary education in a very efficient fashion. After all, for college students what could be more efficient than earning an academic degree from their personal computers? Further, what could be a less expensive way to for academic administrators to distribute post-secondary instructional material to the students than making it available on the Internet? Compared to the ongoing cost of physical classrooms distance education is a real bargain. For the academic with a graduate degree or a teacher with a bachelor degree willing to earn a Ph.D. or master degree, the growing opportunity to acquire an online faculty opening increases each semester as more online college degree programs appear on the Internet.

It is time for academics with graduate degrees to go beyond the physical classroom with adjunct teaching jobs online. The reason for this immediacy is that the layoffs recently endured by teachers have left many educators shaken and anxious about their career futures. One very specific way to overcome this unfortunate situation is to begin pursuing faculty online positions with online college degree programs by using a personal computer to visit the multitude of online bachelor degree programs and online master degree programs. At this time every community college, state college, four-year university and technical school offers at least some online classes to their enrolled students, and with the passing of each semester they will offer even more opportunities for their college and university students to earn an online degree by accessing instructional information on the Internet. It is important, therefore, that every teachers that is technically prepared to use a computer to interact with these students to understand that an academically qualified online adjunct instructor is needed to teach each and every online course within an online degree programs. The growth of online teaching as a viable career will continue for decades to come and the educators now nervous about how they will replace or supplement income lost to layoffs should immediately start making applications for online faculty positions.

What many educators fail to realize is that being anchored to one physical classroom on one traditional campus is a genuine career dead end if for no other reason than there is no mobility available in this scenario. Today it is extremely useful to be able to choose where to work, and this means where to live while working. A traditional academic cannot pick up and move to a city or town with a lower cost of living on the spur of the moment. If nothing else, the new location may be so rural that there is no school within driving distance. On the other hand, an online adjunct instructor with the ability to locate and apply for multiple online faculty openings can pick up a laptop computer on a moment’s notice, travel to another city or town and never miss even one online class or the income derived from thatching that class. The linkage between online teaching and personal and professional mobility is clear when the online college professor makes the decision to live for any length of time in another geographical location. Educators wishing to achieve the freedom to decide where they teach every day should give very serious consideration to online teaching as a viable academic career. Distance education technology has matured to the point that every community college, state college, technical school and four-year university now offers online college classes to their enrolled students. Each of these online college classes have to be taught by a qualified academic with a graduate degree because of the standards set by the accreditation boards. Teachers willing to commit to learning how to use a personal computer to navigate the Internet in order to move smoothly and quickly in and out of a variety of online bachelor degree programs and online master degree programs can build a full time online teaching schedule. This schedule can be coordinated from any city or town the educator wants to live in. Plus, if the academic want to leave and travel again the faculty online positions go with them since all of the online college degree programs are located on the Internet. Granted, there is a lot to be said for the comfort provided by familiar surroundings including a permanent physical classroom, but the teachers in public education concerned about additional layoffs can begin to prepare for a portable career in online teaching today by starting a search of online degree programs. The trouble caused by the teacher layoffs is troubling for many educators in the sense that they are worried that a career teaching in public education settings is one that is now untenable in the long run. This is a reasonable concern since the budgetary funds needed to pay full time faculty salaries is still threatening to dry up to a slow trickle. However, it is entirely possible to redeem a teaching career and make it fulfill the promise it held in graduate school by acquiring multiple online faculty jobs with online degree programs. Every post-secondary academic institution now has some form of distance education in place for their students. In some community colleges in a rural area this can mean a handful of online courses targeted to developmental subjects and in densely populated urban area this can be complete online bachelor degree programs with thousands of online college courses. In both cases the online adjunct professor positions generated by the mere presence of distance learning can be filled by a teacher willing to invest the time and effort to learn how to apply for the online teaching positions. An online teaching schedule can provide an academic with a graduate degree the needed remuneration for the intellectual effort without the constant worry of additional downsizing at a physical campus.

The academic employment landscape is changing as a result of the evaporating monies needed to adequately fund traditional campuses and pay the facilities that work on them. The reason this is happening is that the academic administrators clearly prefer the hire online adjunct instructor to teach the growing numbers of online college courses they are offering their students instead of hiring traditional faculty members and having them deliver instruction in a physical classroom. At the post-secondary level of the academy it is easy to observe the numbers of adjunct college professors trying to earn a decent living from teaching at one or two community colleges, state universities or technical schools. However, these part-time college instructors would be better off if they started teaching online for five or six colleges and universities from a laptop computer. If nothing else, they would earn more online adjunct income from multiple faculty online positions than it is possible to earn on the traditional campuses. With this in mind, it is vitally important for any educator with a master degree to start teaching students earning accredited online university degrees in order to begin and to continue earning a living from teaching students.

The online adjunct instructor that is successful is dependent on initiative and determination for guidance. There is no central planning department for academics now unemployed or underemployed as a result of faculty budget cuts in public education. Each teacher is now responsible for building an alternative teaching schedule that will replace lost income and that schedule should now be populated with online faculty openings with accredited distance learning programs. In many ways an educator with a earned graduate degree that transitions out of the physical classroom on a traditional campus and into an online teaching schedule for all or most of the income from teaching students is much more an academic entrepreneur than an employee of a state system. This difference is vitally important because an online college professor learns how to execute an online teaching strategy that can withstand the inevitable loss of one of two online college classes. If there is some difficulty with one online college degree programs it is a relatively simple matter to apply for additional online adjunct positions with new online degree programs offered by community colleges, for-profit colleges and state universities. It is to the advantage of the online instructor that post-secondary academic institutions are now deploying online college classes at a much more rapid rate than in the past.

The maturing of distance education technology allows academic administrators to offer college and university students the opportunity to earn an online bachelor degree or online master degree from their personal computers at home and at work. As more online degree programs appear on the Internet the more the community colleges, state universities and for-profit colleges need technically adroit online adjunct instructors with earned graduate degrees to teach the online courses. This evolution of online teaching from a few scattered online degree programs to a fully deployed digital curriculum that grows more available and accepted each passing academic year means recently unemployed educators can use online adjunct job openings as a way to restore a lost teaching income. The best way for an inquisitive academic to begin applying for online adjunct employment is to use a computer to locate the faculty application section of the thousands of post-secondary academic websites. The particular section of the individual school’s websites provides a teacher the opportunity to supply the human resources department documentation of academic achievement and classroom experience. It is vitally important to submit multiple online teaching applications each day in order to acquire enough online courses to teach to make the effort worth the time. Educators wanting to teach online for community colleges, for-profit colleges and state universities need academic ambition in order to build a teaching schedule filled with online adjunct teaching jobs. This ambition is quite different from that which is taught in graduate school because it involves a new perception of the economic role of the relationship between the teacher and the academic institution. For example, the successful online adjunct college professor offers an intellectual and technical skill set to the thousands of post-secondary academic institutions on a contract basis while the traditional educator is employed by one school at a time. Unfortunately, the traditional academic employment model is failing teachers at a startling rate as budgetary funds required to pay faculty salaries dry up. On the other hand, the forward thinking academics with earned graduate degrees, a master degree or doctorate, are busy applying for faculty online positions and are experiencing success as the online adjunct income grows with each passing online class. Ultimately, the true mark of an ambitious academic is the willingness to change as the times demand, and the demand now required of teachers is the task of learning how to use a personal computer to teach online. The academic labor model has changed in ways that catch traditional educators off balance in many cases. In many cases the teacher has no idea that there is any alternative to waiting for the next round of layoffs, and in many instances the educator simply resigns early and accepts unemployment as the inevitable result of budget cuts. Fortunately, there is an alternative to being an unemployed or underemployed academic. The issue for many teachers with the alternative, however, is that online college faculty positions demand entrepreneurial tendencies with unfortunately are not taught in graduate school. The simple fact of the matter is that online adjunct employment must be pursued on a daily basis just as any market is by the eager participants. It is important that an educator with a graduate degree, a master degree or Ph.D., learn how to engage the thousands post-secondary academic institutions as an academic entrepreneur instead of as a job seeker. To put it bluntly, a successful online adjunct instructor understands that it is necessary to teach online for multiple online degree programs with many community colleges, state universities and for profit colleges in order to earn a decent living. The academic that learns how to market an intellectual and technical skill set will certainly earn more income than a teacher simply looking for a position in a physical classroom on a traditional campus.