The real trouble with teaching college students today at a traditional university, community college or state-college is that the vast majority of faculty positions in the physical college classroom, adjunct instructors, do not pay a living wage. A quick glance at the discussion forums populated by traditional college adjuncts trying to find adequate academic employment after receiving a Ph.D. or master’s degree indicates that there isn’t much attractive about teaching on a traditional college campus outside of the lovely trees and close-cropped lawns. This creates a huge problem with individuals who want to use their earned graduate degrees to begin a career as a college faculty member. Of course, one solution to this economic problem is to teach online for various online bachelor degree programs and online master degree programs. Certainly, the popularity of distance education is the key to earning a good living from online faculty positions.
College students today actually like the idea of earning a bachelor of science in business administration, and accounting degree or an electrical engineering degree from their personal computers while enrolled in an accredited online college degree program. The traditional college adjunct instructor can take advantage, so to speak, of this enthusiasm for distance education technology by learning how to coordinate in multiple online adjunct positions for the same electronic devices employed so readily by the college and university students. With a combination of time management techniques and computer skills it is possible for an online adjunct faculty member to teach online for four or five different online degree programs.
There is also the factor of time present in the understanding of online teaching as a career path. If an online college class for an online degree program offering an online masters degree in education pay the online adjunct instructor two thousand dollars for an eight week online course, and the same college class in a physical college classroom pays the same two thousand dollars for a traditional sixteen-week semester, the online course actually pay more to the online adjunct instructor each week for the same amount of teaching effort, plus two eight-week online college courses could be taught back-to-back, as they often are in online master’s degree programs, and pay the online college professor twice as much, four thousand dollars, for the same sixteen-weeks of intellectual labor. Granted, there is still some discussion about the pedagogical aesthetics of the academic quality of physical classroom instruction versus online classroom discussion, but that discussion can wait until the college instructor is actually earning a living from online adjunct jobs before it reaches a conclusion.
What is important for an adjunct college instructor to realize immediately is that a real living, one that will actually pay the bills, is to be acquired from teaching online for accredited online bachelor degree programs and accredited online master degree programs. Ultimately, the focus for an individual with an earned graduate degree is on the potential online adjunct income it is possible to earn by learning how to look forward to college teaching with online faculty positions.