Adjunct opportunities

Hey everyone,

I'm looking to pick up some additional online management and/or marketing adjunct opportunities, and thought this might be a good place to start.

I have an MBA with a digital marketing concentration and an MS in Management, both from AACSB schools. Also have 10+ years of operations management, project management, product development, and engineering experience. I currently have 2 years of CC online teaching experience, but can't really seem to find any additional positions.

Does anyone know of any open positions?

 

There's a VERY active Facebook group on this subject that you should check out called Make a Living Teaching Online.

 

My suggestion, based on my experience, is to email department chairs at your local colleges. Sell your education and background to them. That's how I got my adjunct gig after applying to countless pools since 2017.

 

I actually have the book Make a Living Teaching Online that I purchased about 8 or 9 years ago still at my mom's house. I need to revisit that book and join their Facebook page. My current problem now is that I don't have 18 hours in a content area outside of education and technology so it will be difficult for me get a position at this point. My UCN PhD when completed will only limit me to those two subjects as well. Whatever position I were to land will probably be one that could be obtained with just a Bachelors degree if I go the technology route. My Masters degree which is in educational technology would not be that marketable to teach although the demand has increased in that field since COVID. I'm better off trying to go into industry and entrepreneurship. I could pick up a few classes in business along the way by using an ENEB degree and get the foreign evaluation for graduate credits as that is the most popular online major to teach.

 

Worth pointing out, that the concept of adjuncting your way to $100k incomes on the beach with part time hours is far outdated.

 

It might be feasible but more difficult now than before mainly because availability to do graduate education online. I was able to make 70 to 80K teaching online a year but left it because the insane and working conditions. Even if you are on the beach, there is no life of having to answer emails in less than 48 hrs, mark hundreds of assignments per week, force to attend continuing education and meetings at 4 to 5 different institutions, pressure to keep very high evaluations by not pissing off a single student, no vacation. etc. I then tried few online businesses that vanished because competition. I came to realization that we have to bite the bullet and get a job with benefits, stability,etc but with bosses, schedules, etc. It is not healthy having 4 to 7 employers with different needs and demands.

 

Your PhD will help you as most schools would prefer a doctorate graduate for adjunct positions. I would suggest local opportunities first, they tend to be also more reliable that online world wide open positions. Local opportunities rely on a good relationship with their faculty.
I agree that business is the way to go, most universities have business programs. Also, as educational technology specialist, you can specialize in designing courses for business education.

 

That actually worked for me as well when I started teaching without a Masters degree back in 2010 as I had a few coworkers who worked alongside of me as tutors teaching without a Masters at my community college. Even for developmental studies courses, they required a Masters with 18 hours in the content field area to be taught. I only had a Bachelors and while I was limited to what I could teach (non-transferrable developmental studies courses), I still got a good number of classes and made the same amount of money per class as everyone else. The problem now is that particular department has been eliminated and all subjects have been reassigned and repurposed to the college content areas. Therefore, this will not work for me anymore since all classes are now transferrable. However, bypassing the postings on job boards or the college site to go directly to the chair of the department for adjunct positions will be your best bet especially if you have had a relationship with that particular school which in my case I had been an intern, alumni, and tutor for my school.

 

Would it be a good retirement job option assuming I only take half the workload you are taking? For example, let's say I was comfortable with an adjunct salary of 35K just to supplement my retirement income. Is that stress-free living?

 

Most classes pay between 2 to 4K. For you to make 35K would need to teach between 10 to 12 classes a year. Most schools run courses every two months so you are looking at two classes at the time to make 35K. I think it is stress free if they come from one or two employers. The main problem is when you need to handle many employers as they require continuing education, meetings, etc. Also, each school has a different type of policies and different type of students, if you stick to one or two schools then it is not so stressful. My mistake is that I wanted to make a living as an adjunct and this is not very healthy for you.
I followed the advise of the book that was referred before "How to make 100K as an adjunct". Basically the advise is to apply as to many schools as you can and teach multiple subjects so you are more marketable. However, learning multiple subjects (I was teaching IT, Operations and Finance) can be also part of the stress. My lesson is that adjunct work can be a good supplement and good for personal development but not good as a career.

 

It depends on how you want to manage your time as well as what you teach. If you teach something that requires a lot of grading and required feedback it may not be worth it.

 

If you teach something that requires neither of those things then you're on borrowed time until your school just replaces you with an automated grading system, anyway.

 

Considering that some foreign schools like Universidad Isabel I have already made it so that no one really has to teach the courses and everything is contracted out with graders which lowers the cost, I can see that happening here in the US at some point.

 

I have to agree that the best way to find a job as an instructor is to find the director of the department and email him/her directly. Also, you should look at this job as a way to get your name out there and gain experience. You won't be getting any good salary or sanity. In fact, with the pandemic, some schools now require the instructors to have live sections and videos even when the class was supposed to be asynchronous. Therefore, the work done by you as an instructor will be too much and it won't be worth it.

*Funny how some students complain to the instructors about how much they pay to the school. With the tuition of two students, the school pays the instructor for that class. Usually, those courses are at least 15 students. But, that is another topic

 

The only difference is that at least in Spain, the tuition is way cheaper than in the USA. They might implement it here but the tuition is ridiculous.

 

While not to say it won’t happen or that effectively it doesn’t happen, but RAs are generally blocking that from becoming common practice.

 

Yes, but they're also not common practice, and while they are having some success there is still significant opposition to them. Disruption can bring about great progress, and certainly changes are needed in education, but I'll simply state I have reservations on expanding them as the model. In the more technical fields, I have yet to see this play out where it didn't dilute the quality of outcomes.