There is a sea change happening in higher education and it directly impacts every adjunct academic teaching in a physical college classroom. The reason for this situation is that state budgets are running on empty and this translates into constrained faculty funds for state colleges and universities. Of course, the administrators of these schools have no intention of taking a financial hit themselves, so they will pass the issue onto the adjunct faculty members. The vehicle, so to speak, that carries these economic and career viability issues to the adjunct college instructors manifests itself in the form of extremely low pay for each individual college or university class and overcrowded classrooms. That is, the adjunct professor on a traditional college campus has to shoulder the burden of the diminishing post-secondary budgets, and it is the adjunct instructor that is least able to adequately shoulder that burden since the adjunct teacher has to sustain him or herself between classes with little or no available economic support. As a result of this disparity between the administrators and the adjunct college professors, the distinct issue of control arises and develops into a distinct sort of intellectual and physical despair over the lack of an avenue by which prosperity is achievable by the fruits of an earned graduate degree and a desire to teach at the post-secondary level. While all of this may sound somewhat negative, the good news is that distance education is now mature and allows to the schools to develop and offer their students participation in online bachelor degree programs and online masters degree programs.
A very distinct measure of professional and personal control can be achieved by an adjunct instructor with the acquisition of multiple online adjunct positions. Unfortunately, a great many adjuncts have a difficult time understanding just how teaching online for five or six online college degree programs can be of any real economic benefit. The most distinct difference between the traditional college or university classroom and the online college courses for the adjunct instructor is the sheer numbers of online college classes that can be gathered into an online teaching portfolio. Actually, it is relatively easy to apply for online adjunct jobs with schools that offer their students to earn a business management degree online, a human resources degree online or an online bachelor of nursing degree. The trick, so to speak, is to constantly make applications for online adjunct faculty positions. The only way to accomplish that volume of online faculty applications is to develop a rotational application strategy for the over five thousand post-secondary academic institutions.
Granted, the learning curve demanded by transitioning out of the physical classroom and into the online degree program system as it exists on the Internet is steep, but it is well worth the time and effort to master because distance education technology is the present and future of higher education. The adjunct academics that take advantage of the power of personal computers to access online bachelor degree programs and online masters degree programs will certainly benefit from the increased online adjunct income streams.