The collapse of faculty funding for public education is leaving many academics without any professional energy. After all, it is extremely difficult to ascertain the direction of teaching in a physical classroom now since the economic dust created by the debate over the reality of deficits at the state level will not settle for quite some time. However, an unemployed or underemployed educator with classroom experience need not be dispirited because it is possible to be an academic dynamo with online college faculty positions. The profusion of online bachelor degree programs and online master’s degree programs is creating a genuine need for technically adroit and academically qualified online adjunct instructors to teach the many online college courses within the online college degree programs. An aggressive academic with a Ph.D. or master’s degree and a modicum of technical skill with a personal computer can learn how to navigate the Internet and make applications for online faculty positions in the conveniently amiable faculty application section of the school’s website. It is important, of course, to grasp the basis of the changes in the academic world as the online faculty applications are loaded into the college, university, for-profit college or community college website.
In a nutshell, the advancement of online degree programs as a vehicle for post-secondary instruction is the direct result of the cost effectiveness of distance education technology. The physical plants knows as college and university campuses are massively expensive to build and maintain, which even further reduces the budgetary funds needed to pay adjunct faculty members a living wage for teach a few classes. Further, a traditional post-secondary adjunct instructor is severely limited by geography when it comes to adding extra physical classrooms to the teaching schedule because it is absolutely necessary to drive between the available campuses and unless the adjunct instructor happens to live in a densely populated urban environment there are usually only two or three campuses within driving distance of each other. The same hold true for a secondary teacher with a graduate degree in that is in economic distress resulting from cutbacks leading to unemployment. Of course, this also applies to supposedly retired academics finding that their funds are in increasingly embarrassingly short supply and need some form of teaching work to supplement their income during the not-so-golden years. Fortunately, the result for educators at all levels of the academy is that the move to implement accredited distance learning courses is creating a great need for teachers to fill online college faculty positions. After all, a real teacher is needed to teach the online college courses even if they are located on the Internet.
The best way to go about actively developing an online teaching portfolio chockful of online classes to teach is to start making as many applications for online adjunct jobs as often as possible. Simply by making applications for online adjunct job openings on a consistent basis every week, it will be possible to acquire six to ten online college courses to teach through the year. Not only will this many online courses energize an academic, but the extra online adjunct income will prove to be quite handy as more traditional public education funds disappear into the budget vapor.