Pay for Online Full-Time Professor

Does anyone know how much do these online full-time professors make per year with, e.g., TUI, Walden, Argosy or Capella?

 

Online teaching is really poor paying if you consider that you require a minimum of a master's degree. Some universities like JUI pay per student so if you end with a class of 4 students, you can get paid around 660 dlls per course. Some universities have a flat rate that varies from 1200 dlls to 2000 dlls per course. Online courses are very time consuming, so if you do that for a living you can teach a max of three to 4 courses per term. If you multiply that by 4 sessions in a year, you end with a paycheck of 24,000 dlls a year.

Most of the online professors are either full time professionals or full time faculty somewhere else, so the extra cash they get is not their main source of income.

Also, you are given contracts every two months so you really don't know if you will have more contracts for the next term.

Lately, the market for online instructors is very competitive so the PhD is normally the minimum requirement and salaries tend to go lower as universities are now hiring professors from another countries where the dollars is stronger.

 

What???

This is rather discouraging.

However, last time I read an article saying that the professor at the Concord Law School gets paid $77,000 a year.
How is this different from what you were referring to?

 

With the exception of TUI, I don't think you'll find many full-time faculty at the institutions you've listed. They may have some folks that serve in joint teaching / administrative roles, but they can't afford to hire many full-time faculty. In this forum I've posted ratio numbers that show some of these programs running 100:1 (students to full-time faculty) or higher ratios.

The "business model" of these for-profit schools is simple - employ large numbers of adjuncts, employed on short-term contracts for generally low wages and no benefits. What happens to tuition dollars? As I've ranted on in this forum, typical for-profit school have 20% of their revenue going for profit, 10% for taxes and 20% or so goes for marketing. 50% of less of your tuition dollar goes for the cost of educating students. Do a search in this NG and you'll see what I've found among non-profits. The results are significantly different.

Overall, part-timers cost only 20-30% of what full-timers cost. So what are these programs based on? You got it - part-timers.

Do I have a problem with this? Sure do. While part-time faculty are a vital addition to most programs, they can't anchor an educational program. Part-timers don't do research, don't advise students, don't create curriculum and don't provide program continunity. In the for-profit world, this isn't an issue - they hire lowly paid marketing types to "advise" students and they don't do research.

Does anyone else have a problem with this? AACSB sure does. They'll only accredit schools with 50% or less of their credit hours taught by part-timers.

Regards - Andy

 

Re: What???

You asked about faculty members in the for-profit online sector. As Andy explained, the for profits normally pay 1/3 of the salary of the regular universities. They sell the fact that you can do it at home and at your own time. It seems ideal for the extra cash job rather for than a full time profession.

However, I know of some people that teach full time online, but this is the case of retired faculty.