Pay/experiences at Stevens-Henager College?

Discussion in 'Online & DL Teaching' started by jam937, Nov 24, 2012.

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  1. jam937

    jam937 New Member

    Anyone know the pay of online adjuncts at Stevens-Henager College? Any experiences?

    Some of the reviews I have seen say $1000 per class with 30 students per class taking 20 hours per week per class in time.
     
  2. truckie270

    truckie270 New Member

    Never heard of the school. How long are the terms? $1000 per class for even a 5 week class with 30 students is piss-poor pay. In order to evaluate pay in classes since there is a wide disparity in class size and length out there - you need to break it down into $ per week/number of students.

    In just looking at their website, let me make the following observations:
    1) They are charging $73K for a BA degree! Quite a bit for a no-name school and exponentially more considering a BA degree takes 46 courses.
    2) Could not find a class length, but 180 credits for a BA would indicate a quarter system (10 week course max). Using your numbers of $1000 for 30 students @ 10 weeks = $100 per week/30 students = $3.33 per student.

    You would seriously do better going to your local B&M campus and collecting aluminum cans for recycling.
     
  3. jam937

    jam937 New Member

    For online classes it looks like they are 4 weeks long. I think the 30 students per class might have been for general education type classes. I'm trying to find out the number for IT classes. Still for a 4 week class at $250 per week/30 students = $8.33 per student per week. That's better then the two places I am teaching at now plus no drive time or gas expense.

    I have seen posts that say the instructors must have a live virtual classroom each week at the same time every week. I'm trying to find out if that is just a question/answer session with students or a lecture, if it's audio, video, or text based and what day of the week its on.
     
  4. truckie270

    truckie270 New Member

    jam937,

    I am curious - what do you value your own time at per hour? If this school is on 4 week terms and requires about 20 hours a week of your time - you are making $12.50 an hour. To quote my friend RFValve - you would be better off doing something else for that kind of money.

    The only way to make this work for you is to get your time per week down - at 10 hours a week you are now making $25 an hour which is much more palatable. Some schools will allow you flexibility to get your hour per week down, others will have defined requirements that are going to keep you in the classroom for those whole 20 hours.

    Once you break a school down to a $ per hour rate - you need to assign an amount of time you will spend on each student per week to include discussion and grading papers. At $25 per hour for this school - you need to be at no more than 20 min. per student per week to make this school a viable option at that wage.
     
  5. jam937

    jam937 New Member

    Long term I want a flexible telecommute job of some type so I can live/move/travel anywhere. I understand the pay for teaching sucks bad. I am sacrificing income for freedom. I can make $100k at a 8-5 job if I stay in one place. I'm hoping to make $40-50k teaching online. It sounds like a big difference but its not as big once you factor in mortgage, insurance, property taxes, income taxes, etc.

    I am currently teaching at ITT and another ACICS school which both pay $1400 for an 11 week class with ~14 students. This equates to $15-16 per hour or $12-13 per hour if you include drive time, gas and vehicle maintenance. That seems to be the rate for non-regionally accredited schools. I know schools like Univ. Phoenix, Strayer, etc. pay about $2300 per class which is more in the $25 per hour range.

    For the last year and a half I have been living full time in an RV traveling the country. It's been great. Now I am stuck in one location teaching at two B&M schools locally. I am mostly just trying to get experience until I finish my masters next year. Next year I will continue with my travels and hopefully start teaching online. Last year I stopped during my travels to do a two month consulting job for extra money and to keep my skills up. I am lucky in that I can usually find a consulting job fairly quickly in bigger cities. I can always go back to the 8-5 job whenever I want (I hope).
     
  6. RFValve

    RFValve Well-Known Member

    40 to 50K is easy to get but you can get close to 100K if you play your cards well. Few pieces of advice:
    -Get a credible doctorate from a good school. This will make your marketable with schools that pay more money and not just the UoP, Kaplans, etc that pay peanuts.
    -Publish in peer review journals and present at conferences. This will allow you to teach at doctoral places where the pay is higher and supervise doctoral dissertations.
    -Specialize is a field that is in demand and requires high level of skill. This means IT, Accounting, Finance, Statistics and in general any field that requires training and cannot be taught by someone that doesn't have the long training that requires to do.

    I made few years more than 100K doing all the above but there is also the burnout. As I hit 40, I needed to slow down so I took a full time position that pays less but requires less work. I still do the online thing but only remained with highest paying schools and dropped the low paid ones and demanding ones.

    Some colleagues in Academia make more than 200K combining online teaching with consulting, dissertation advising etc but the key is to have solid credentials.

    I know that good education costs and takes more time but it is worth at the end. It is better to pay 80K and spend 5 years for a good doctorate that can bring you 200K in revenue in the long term than paying 40K and spend 3 years in a doctorate that will not bring you even close 100K.

    There is also opportunity to combine your online teaching with consulting and training. Many training companies are willing to pay thousand dollars a day for the right trainer. If you do 4 or 5 one week training a year that is another 20 to 25K a year. Specialize in training in something really technical (e.g. security, finance, etc) as this is the type of training that is always in demand.


    My two cents.
     
    Last edited by a moderator: Nov 26, 2012
  7. RFValve

    RFValve Well-Known Member

    The issue is that many of the prospect online adjuncts are willing to make minimum wage as long as they can get into online teaching.

    One has to be careful about this, the reality is that online teaching experience at a school like the University of Phoenix is not going to impress much on a resume so if you are doing it for resume building perhaps is not worth it.

    It makes more sense to go to a local school with a better name that can help you build your resume so you can land better work even if this requires you to commute.

    I think Truckie has it right, he got his Doctorate from a good school and teaches at reputable places that do not pay minimum wage. If you want to make some money in this industry, this is the way to go instead of working for peanuts at some of the online for profits that won't really help much to get better opportunities that can actually pay a decent wage.

    I realize that most of us would want to work from home in our underwears and make 100K, this is not impossible but you would need to get strong credentials and be selective with the schools you work with.
     
    Last edited by a moderator: Nov 27, 2012

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