Earn your doctorate online and be an online adjunct? Might be tough.

You might want to think long and hard about this if you are considering earning your doctorate online and then becoming an online instructor. It's not really new information, but the Wall Street Journal is reporting that the major employers of online instructors, the for-profit universities, are hemorrhaging students. Enrollments are dropping off of a cliff and it seems likely that people with aspirations of earning their doctorate online and then being an online adjunct may be in for a bitter disappointment. The jobs are drying up. With the advent of more and more traditional schools offering online degrees, often at cheaper prices, it does not seem likely that things will get better for the profit schools in the near future. I foresee many online instructors competing for few jobs in the near future.

1. Wall Street Journal Article

2. University of Phoenix Downsizing

I think it will be better for the seasoned online teachers because they will be favored over those who are just starting out. I wouldn't want to be a newbie in this climate.


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You might think: "Well, if enrollments are plunging at the for-profits, then at least there will be fewer new doctorates entering the market. So the competition will go down".

Unfortunately, that logic doesn't seem to be valid. At UoP, for example, total enrollments are down by more than 30% since the peak in 2010 -- but doctoral enrollments are only down by about 10%. People still seem to be highly motivated to get doctoral degrees.

So the number of new doctorates (i.e. people who want to teach) has fallen, but not nearly as much as the number of lower-level students (i.e. people who need to be taught). So the oversupply of doctorates is still growing.

Given the oversupply, adjunct compensation should remain low, and could fall even further. In the long run, it wouldn't surprise me if schools began charging doctoral degree holders for the right to teach. If a school can make a profit by selling the title of "Doctor", why not do the same for the title of "Professor" ?

 

The seasoned online teachers will be favored -- but only if they are willing to accept the same low compensation as a newbie. If a seasoned teacher expects more, then the job will go to a newbie who doesn't.

 

Yes, but I would expect that people will adapt to the market. Better for seasoned instructors to take a pay cut than lose their job to a newbie.


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Woah, that's chilling.

 

The problem with the working for free scenario is that there would be problems with reliability. If a person is working for free, not depending on the job for income, there is little motivation to hang in there if the going gets rough. Schools might be able to successfully charge a student for some sort of online professor apprenticeship program, but it seems unlikely that they could depend on people working for free to do a good job and to be reliable.

 

So you would take an industry that is criticized for being "for-profit" and run it further down by having volunteer teachers? I really doubt it. Also, you are basing this on the assumption that everyone (or most people) going for a PhD actually want to be adjuncts!

 

Good point, and those are the people this thread is addressed to. I wonder what the percentage actually is.

 

On the flip-side, one for-profit that I teach for just doubled the pay per student and reduced the class size (in the end it is the same pay for half the students) as they push to have a "richer" interaction with students. I only pick up about 3-4 classes a year.

I have also seen a school increase the number of student from 25 to 30 but in the end the class has about 22-25 active students.

 

You doubt that a for-profit industry would consider a move that would increase profits ?

I think the for-profit schools pay no more than they have to. If they can keep reducing adjunct compensation -- as they have been doing for years -- then they will continue to do so. The logical endpoint to this pattern is that people may eventually be expected to teach without financial compensation -- they would still be rewarded by receiving the title of "Professor of X at University Y", which they could use to help market themselves in other respects.

No, because it is obvious that not every new doctoral graduate wants to teach. But many do. My assumption is simply that the supply of new doctoral degree holders who do want to teach exceeds the demand for new teachers.

This assumption is consistent with the market realities that adjunct positions are (1) not easy to get and (2) pay poorly. This is exactly what you would expect if supply exceeded demand.

 

Here is a question that was posed in another degreeinfo thread:

My guess: if the number of people with this attitude were to reach a sufficient mass, then yes -- online schools might allow them to teach as volunteers, or for purely nominal compensation.

 

Not to that point but new positions do not pay for training and some pay you a lower fee for the first course with the excuse that you are on probation.

Most schools take a lot more instructors that they really need so you might land an online adjunct position but never get to teach.

Most people do take online doctorates with the hope to teach online. I really dont see the point of getting am online doctorate from a school with poor reputation other than being able teach although I am sure that some might believe that these programs might help them to land a job as a CEO, CFO or other high level position.

Many just follow the advice of people like Dr Babb that shows how with an online doctorate you can become your own boss and make more than $200K.

As the bubble of the online adjunct burst, people will stop taking these online doctorates.

 

Concur. I used to argue against you on issues like this, but now I have gone over to the dark side with RFValve.

 

Randell,
You have been long enough in this forum to know that most people that call for help for online PhDs is because they either want to become full time faculty or at least be able to adjunct. We can easily take a sample of people that posted in this forum and test the hypothesis that at least more than 50% want to be part time or full time academics. This actually can make a nice paper for a journal in online education.

Online schools charge the 50 to 80K for an online doctorate because they know people can make this money back in a year or two as online adjuncts. People see this as extra cash on top of their salaries so the 50 to 80K investment makes sense as the ROI is reasonable. I am sure that many also see the doctorate as a way to make themselves more valuable to their organizations but the motivator of the extra cash on the side is really convincing. If people start reporting that they cannot get online teaching gigs because the market is really bad, people will not be investing large amounts of money in this type of degrees. Those ones that do it for the love to the field or self improvement will rather go with a DETC degree or one from a school like UNISA that is not going to cost them an arm or a leg.

 

I ran a survey and collected information from PhD holders (profit and non-profit / online and B&M) and out of the 104 people that listed the reason they earned a PhD (total of 120 respondents), about 16 said it was to teach/adjunct/gain a tenure track position.

When asked if: 5. Did the results you experienced from earning your doctoral degree (better marketability, pay raise, new opportunities, etc,) match the expected outcome you had when you started the program?

The results were better then expected - 44.2% 53
The results were exactly what I expected - 41.7% 50
The results were worst then expected - 14.2% 17

I completed a PhD because it was paid for by my employer and was only $3K out of pocket. I was already doing well as an adjunct with just a masters in IT management. I know what you mean about many people looking for PhDs to adjunct but I also wonder how many of them finish...is that enough drive to get to the finish line?

 

If you taught 4 courses per year--a pretty big load for an adjunct, it might take you 5-10 years to pay it off.

Schools charge what they charge for the same reason any business does--a mix of value delivered, what the market will bear, and the costs of production, to name a few--not because of some desperate group of adjunct wannabes driving up the price.

I've been in this business for 35 years, and I hold a Ph.D. specializing in it. I have yet to meet someone pursuing a doctorate while already in a career--online or otherwise--expressly so he/she can teach as an adjunct. (And I always ask people why they pursued their nontraditional doctorate--always.) That is a fantasy contained in the Degreeinfo bubble. I'm not saying it hasn't happened, but it isn't a serious factor.

Better yet, ask posters here who have earned a doctorate nontraditionally why they did it. You might be surprised at the diversity of answers you'd get.

 

So, 13% said this, but the breakdown of people who did it expressly to do adjunct teaching is certainly a subset of that. Let's be generous and give them three-quarters of it. That would indicate that only 1 in 10 pursued a doctorate in order to obtain adjunct teaching gigs. And that doesn't account for the fact that even those people had other reasons, too.

I doubt any nontraditional university is marketing to that effect. In fact, has anyone ever seen an advertisement focused on the opportunity to teach after completing the school's doctorate? I don't recall one. Enhancing one's career is almost always the pitch. (I can't even think of another reason offered by UoP, Capella, Walden, etc. Maybe moving into a licensed field like psychology?)

Look at how these schools advertise. That should be revealing.

 

Time will tell. I am just happy I am done and have a solid teaching CV (6+ years).

 

Are there any areas (IT, finance, etc.) where the demand for adjuncts will not be affected as much?