In any intellectual pursuit such as earning a graduate degree, a master’s degree or doctorate degree, there needs to be some evidence that it is possible to employ a graduate degree to earn a decent living. Unfortunately, for individuals with a Ph.D. or masters degree who pursue college teaching as a career path quickly discover the returns on the intellectual investment required to graduate from a graduate program are diminishing on a daily basis. While some will argue that the true reward of graduate education is the acquired knowledge itself, sooner or later there has to be some recognition that it is necessary to earn something above poverty wages in order to live a decent life. Traditional adjunct college professors working on a physical university or college campuses are discovering to their distinct dismay that the wages paid by postsecondary administrators for teaching college students is far below what any reasonable person would consider a living wage.
Since there is no indication that these university and college administrators intend to increase the amount of money they pay adjunct instructor to teach in a physical campus classroom, it is certainly up to the person with a graduate degree to consider teaching online for online bachelor degree programs and online master degree program. The reason this is an intelligent choice, online teaching as a career path, is because online instructor job openings are on the academic horizon.
Distance education technology is no longer a figment of technical imagination. New and returning college students are so comfortable with their electronic devices that they easily understand the potential of earning online business management degrees, an online registered nurse degree or online degrees for military. The for-profit colleges understood the significance of offering accredited online college degree programs to their student population years ago, and the traditional colleges and universities are now following that lead.
Eventually, this effort on the part of physical postsecondary academic institutions, combined with the existing online degree programs offered by for-profit colleges will produce a very large number of online college classes that will need an online adjunct instructor teaching them.
This means that an adjunct college professor teaching a physical college classroom no longer needs to suffer from low pay and overcrowded classrooms. An individual with an earned graduate degree who will master the computer skills necessary to move efficiently and effectively in and out of online degree programs every day will be able to fill online teaching schedule with multiple online college courses.
Of course, the ability to teach ten or twelve online college classes at one time from an inexpensive laptop computer means that the online college professor can generate considerably more online adjunct income then the traditional college teacher can possibly ever earn by continuing to teach in a physical classroom. Locating online adjunct job opportunities is really as simple as going to the websites of the thousands of state colleges, community colleges, four-year universities and for-profit colleges and clicking on the link on the first page of the site that takes the prospective online college instructor to faculty application section. By doing this it will come crystal-clear that online instructor job opening are on the academic horizon.