Looking to trade up

I teach on campus adjunct for a university, $4200 per undergrad class (14 wk semester) and $5000 per grad class. Because that's not enough, I'm also teaching at SNHU online, where I get $2000 per 8 week session. I'm teaching my second class there.

The problem is, I love my in-person courses but the pay is small, and my online course is such a grind and doesn't overlap with my in-person courses. So I'm teaching five courses a year which is a ton of prep. I do get some overlap as I'm in my second year of this crazy schedule, so some of my stuff I can reuse, but a lot of it I have to rewrite regularly.

SNHU also is a PITA because you have to create faculty-generated content plus the assignments (which with my subjects, are a huge thing), they have good training but barely provide you with a syllabus, they changed textbooks on me mid-year (ARGH!), and the course requires a ton of manual grading plus facilitation. So it takes me about 2-3 hrs per night seven nights a week, 8 weeks a semester... you can do the math but I'd do better as a barista at Starbucks.

Now that I've got a year/2 courses under my belt online, I'm looking for a better option - less prep, more facilitation is fine but less original content. I have zero desire to record lectures and don't have the schedule to do anything other than asynchronous.

Suggestions on better pay/less work? Thanks very much!!

 

Well, not a community college We just got raises last year, we now make $1850 per 3 credit course (16 weeks). The upside, is that all of us have had the same courses for so long that the revisions are minor - so my prep time/grading is about 3 hours per week, and 3 hours teaching per section. I'm not teaching this year, I've decided to rent out a room in my basement, I've doubled my income.

 

I have covered this in-depth here before, but you need to move beyond thinking about $$$ per class and think in terms of $$$ per student per week. For example - a 14 week class with 20 students at $4200 is only $15 per week/per student, while a 6-week class at $1700 with 10 students will pay you twice as much per student/per week. Most people would pick the higher dollar amount at first glance because they have not run the numbers.

On a related note - if you have more than 20 students in a class you need to seriouly consider getting a new school regardless of what they pay you. You can tell a lot about how well a school treats faculty based on class size alone.

SNHU does not sound like a great deal in terms of the amount of prep required of you.

 

Good advice by Truckie. It's disillusioning for many to hear TaxProfMom's description and while it may not represent every adjuncts situation it does come very close to the "Do you want fries with that...?" scenario that has been described so many times in the past.

 

Which is exactly the point of my advice. I am really not trying to pat my own back or impress anyone, but I have been doing this for a while and I know what I am taking about. I just completed my taxes for 2010 and I was really close to six figures - far from Barista or fry-cowboy wages. I will also guarantee that I worked a lot less than most cubicle-dwellers.

 

Truckie,

I have to agree and I have done well (not as good as you but well) and spend a 2-3 hours a day teaching for a great return. It is about working smart - not hard. I know you hear to comments of "How can you teach 100 students without the quality suffering" and stuff like that but there was a recent story about a UCF professor that got his midterm or final hacked into and all of his students passed. The article said he had 500 students in those classes that semester. I have never had 500 students in one semester!

Anyway, I sometimes wonder if the people that say they only make $10 an hour are really make $50 hour and want to throw others off the track so there is more work for them. Yeah, yeah, that is it. It is only $10 an hour...others need not apply and leave it all for Truckie and I. onder:

 

I'm going to go a different way with my advice. By the statements above you've only been teaching for a short while so I have to ask the question:

Have you not gotten to the point in your teaching career where you're teaching the same classes over and over again? I know in my spouse's case that her first year was constant prep as her chair put her in two different classes every 8 weeks. Now that she's been through the entire course catalog once her prep time has dropped significantly and her books, while they have changed to keep up with the next versions aren't so different that she can't just adapt basic content and lecture to the differences.

Granted, she's doing 2 classes each at 2 different schools in the NH area, but based on what I've seen I'd expect that your prep will lessen as time moves on provided you stay at the same places. I've heard some of the same things about SNHU that you've posted here; but I've also heard the same about UNH, UMass, Hesser College, UMaine etc. etc. etc. There are just some negatives to every job.

My advice is that there's no such thing as better pay for less work. The work may change to suit your preferences but you're still going to have issue every so often.

 

The OP's on ground adjunct rates are MUCH higher than most places I have seen. I am happy if I can make 2k on ground. Granted my field is less in demand and in the humanities.

I am usually pretty happy online if I can make $1000 per month of a class. As you can see without a doctorate, UoP is not very satisfying - but it is easier than most schools. My problem is always getting enough classes. Damn discounting of humanities by the nation.... ha.

I know people who can get posting / facilitating for a 30 person class down to less than 30 min a night, and still get great reviews. I am not quite at that level yet, but the more and more you see the same posts, the easier it is to have template responses.

 

Again - you need to consider context. I will take $1100 classes at UOP all day long over $4200 for a 14 week class with 25-30 students. When I do teach at UOP, I teach five week courses and typically have less than 10 students. Dollar per student per week is the only way to compare apples to oranges.

 

Starbucks also offers healthcare benefits to part-time employees, all the coffee/espresso drinks you want while on shift, and a free pound of coffee a week. I'm guessing SNHU does not.

 

And you get to say things like "Venti" and "Machiatto" all day every day. Seriously, Starbucks is a good job. I have a friend who is a store manager and makes mid to high five figures + generous benefits and a number of opportunities to move or advance in the company.

 

In-person, I teach intro accounting during the year, and I'm on my fourth semester so that is pretty much in the can but I still have grading of course (but mult choice) of weekly quizzes, three exams, four bonuses, and entering attendance sheets. I'm updating my material as I go and introducing some handouts this semester but I don't do much prep there. During the summer, I teach Intermediate one session (third time this summer) and Tax I the other session. They're both great and I reuse content but tax has to continually be redone each year, especially Tax II (corporate, estates, partnerships). My grad class is a marketing elective that has to be redone every year. I have about 30-35 students each semester but I do have a tutor so I don't have to do a lot of the extra help sessions or maintain much for office hours.

My online course that I'm teaching now is Tax II - I just got a request to teach Tax I next session. That will be nice because whatever I do for online for Tax I I will do for in-person Tax I, but grading tax returns is brutal. Line by line, often 20 or so pages. I have anywhere from 8-16 students per term.

I suppose it's better to look at where I'm established and ask how I can work more efficiently - especially for the online work. There are three areas that use up my time the most - writing original content (ugh), responding to posts/facilitation, and creating & grading assignments.

My deal at the on-campus university is a pretty good one, and I suspect my hourly rate even considering the hour commute each way, is pretty high. It's the online stuff that is such a drag.

Thanks for the advice!