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Fill Up Your Teaching Bucket with Online Adjunct Faculty Positions

If you are one of the college adjunct instructors suffering economically from the massive budget cuts at state-funded community colleges, colleges and universities, or you have an earned graduate degree, a masters degree or a Ph.D., and went into corporate life after graduate school instead of becoming a college instructor, now is the time to refresh your income by pursuing and acquiring a variety of online adjunct faculty positions. With more new and returning college students choosing to attend college online by taking online college courses from their home computers he need for qualified online adjunct instructors is increasing daily. At quick look around the Internet will reveal entire web sites full of online adjunct faculty positions announcements that need the immediate attention of people with the appropriate academic credentials, a graduate degree in hand, and the technical skills to interact with large numbers of students every day. The primary reason for the appearance of many online bachelor degree programs and post-secondary programs that offer an online masters degree is simply the cost benefits to both the college students and the schools. It is undeniable that large college campuses are very expensive to maintain. It is also undeniable that it is costly and time consuming for today’s college students, many of whom have families and several jobs, to drive a personal vehicle to a distant location at odd hours. The same cost benefits of online education degrees can be realized by online adjuncts willing to learn how to search for schools that offer an online business degree, an online psychology degree or any of a dozen masters degree online.

The remuneration from online adjunct position can be quite healthy once the payment structure is fully understood and once the approach by the online instructor is clearly articulated so that it is understood from the perspective of academic entrepreneurism, as opposed to merely getting a job teaching online college classes for a school that provides its students with the chance to earn a bachelors degree online. Every school can determine how much it will pay an online adjunct to teach an individual class. Basically, the fee, and it is a fee instead of salary, can run between one thousand two hundred dollars per class to as much as four thousand dollars per class. Generally speaking, online courses for masters degrees online pay more than online classes for an online bachelor degree. Still, it is probably prudent to estimate about two thousand dollars in payment to teach a class for an accredited online degree program.

At first blush that may not seem like all that much money, but upon closer inspection it can certainly become a decent living with the aid of distance education technology, access to the Internet and a search strategy that incorporates a constant application process. It is possible to teach two or three courses at one time for an online degree program that offers an associate degree in nursing online while teaching two more online college classes for an online program that offers an online rn nursing degree. Generally speaking, one college or university does not care if the online adjunct instructors teach for other colleges or universities that offer the online counseling degree or an online psychology degree. The schools are primarily interested in how efficiently the online adjunct instructor takes care of their online classes. That means an alert individual with a graduate degree in a core academic area such as English, math, history or psychology could teach two online classes for three different online bachelor degree programs or online master degree program at one time. Granted, it will take serious effort to actually acquire that many online classes, but the effort will be well worth it since if each of the classes pays an average fee of two thousand dollars, this would represent a sum of twelve thousand dollars. Further, that sum may be earned throughout the entire year since many online classes are held even during the summer months. The duration of the classes is another factor to consider when analyzing the possible income from online adjunct jobs. A good number of online bachelor degree programs offer five to eight week courses instead of the traditional sixteen week semesters. This shortened class time mans that more online college classes can be taught over a period of twelve months. The twelve thousand dollars earned for teaching six online courses for schools with an online bachelor degree program would dramatically increase if each of the six class periods is eight weeks long and run back to back. With that time frame in place, it is possible to earn those twelve thousand dollars six times every twelve months. So, for the year, that is a total of seventy two thousand dollars in income from adjunct instruction for accredited online degree programs. Of course, such a princely sum demands razor-sharp time management skills and no little technical expertise at navigating swiftly the different interfaces of the various online college degree programs, but it can be done with the right amount of academic elbow grease and the correct attitude.

The right attitude includes understanding that the marketplace of online accredited degrees is in flux at best. State-funded colleges and universities, plus the vast network of state-funded community colleges and technical schools, are doing their best to transition through these parlous economic times, and it is only reasonable to expect them to behaving according to the financial restrictions set upon them. For example, a community college may be forced to make their full time faculty members teach a double class load, which means that the online adjunct instructor may not be offered any online degree courses to teach for a period of time. It is because of this uncertainty that that successful online adjunct instructor will always be in the market, so to speak, for new online college programs that offer the online business degree and online psychology degree, to name just two online bachelor degrees online that will have a large number of students in the introductory courses.

It is in the introductory courses that the adjunct instructor teaching online will find the greatest amount of online courses to teach. With a serious sense of dedication to the searching out of online bachelor degree programs and online masters degree programs, and the right viewpoint from which to develop the most effective expectations about the market to which the academic and intellectual skill set is being offered the person with an earned graduate degree and a determination to understand the dynamic of the academic market place today can certainly fill up their his or her teaching bucket with online adjunct faculty positions that overall pay quite nicely.