It is often the case that the stress of restarting an academic career after being laid off due to budget cuts prevents a teacher for making use of the most immediate solutions to underemployment or unemployment. In the case of traditional adjunct college teachers the biggest hurdle is facing the undeniable fact that the post-secondary academic labor market has changed greatly over the last ten year. The vast majority of college and university instructors are temporarily employed on a semester to semester basis and they are limited to teaching on the few physical campuses within driving distance. Obviously, this is not an optimal employment scenario for an individual with an earned graduate degree. On the other hand, an emerging career alternative for teachers that want to continue or begin earning a decent living can be discovered in employment opportunities for teaching jobs online. Now is definitely time for any teachers with appropriate academic credentials and modest computer skills to dive in and locate online faculty teaching jobs.
The resistance to developing an online teaching portfolio has many manifestations. However, the biggest issue and the one that is hardest to confront is the idea that there isn’t a real living to be made from teaching online for online bachelor degree programs and online master’s degree programs. The truth of the matter, and it is actually quite a positive truth, is that it is possible to acquire enough online courses to earn a very nice living throughout the year. In general, online college degree programs offer much shorter classes than the traditional sixteen week semester offered by traditional colleges. Further, there is no summer break for online degree programs, so it is possible to collect multiple incomes every month or every two weeks.
Additionally, the online teaching portfolio can be populated with more online classes or less online courses as the situation of the online adjunct instructor requires from time to time. For example, if an online adjunct college teacher needs extra free time it is easy to just politely decline offered online courses form a particular online degree program. On the other hand, if more online adjunct income is needed it is just as easy to make additional online applications for new online faculty positions. In either case the schedule for online teaching works in the favor of the adroit online teacher. What is definitely a positive aspect of transitioning out of the physical classroom and into accredited online college courses as an instructor is that the students will continue to flock to schools that offer the accredited distance learning degree. The schools, community colleges, state colleges, four-year universities and for-profit colleges, will increase their offerings of accredited distance learning programs as time goes on. It is this increasing numbers of college degrees online that make it important for the prospective online adjunct instructor to continue looking for and applying for online faculty teaching jobs every day. By making the effort to visit the websites of the thousands of post-secondary academic institutions as often as possible the academic needing to supplement an income from teaching of needing to replace entirely a lost income can regain the good feeling that comes from teaching as a career choice.
