Monday, June 25, 2012

Take the Perplexity Out of Online Adjunct Faculty Employment

It is time for academics to take the perplexity out of online adjunct faculty employment because it is clear that the budgetary funds necessary to pay full time teaching salaries is being reduced as the economy continues to stumble without pause. Eventually, practically every first year and second year college and university course will be offered in the form of an online class within an online college degree program, and the teacher wishing to continte earning a living will want to learn how to take advantage of the tremendous changes taking place on the traditional post-secondary campus.

However, before there can be any expectation of success for a prospective online adjunct instructor there needs to be an examination of the accepted academic career model taught in graduate school and how it is currently being transformed into an entirely new approach to teaching at the post-secondary level of public education. The fact of the matter is that the administrators responsible for managing the budget of a college or university must confront the economic reality that continuing to pay tenure-track and tenured academics their current salaries and benefits is not supportable given the decline in available monies from the usual sources. Instead, the traditional academic faculty positions will be replaced with online adjunct positions filled by technically adept and entrepreneurially inclined educators willing to accept the changes in the economic landscape and adjust their expectations of academic employment.

The changes to academic employment forced by the technical ability of delivering post-secondary instruction to millions of college and university students are confusing to many established teachers and new graduates with freshly minted doctorates and master degrees, but this confusion can be cleared up easily and quickly by learning how to think about post-secondary instruction from the perspective of the nimble freelance academic with a firm grasp of how to generate multiple online adjunct income streams instead of the state academic employee expecting to stay at one state college, university, community college or technical school for decades and retire with a lifelong pension.

Saturday, June 16, 2012

How Effective Is a Degree Earned Online in Forwarding Your Career?

The level to which you educate yourself goes a long way in determining the altitudes you can achieve in your career. It is imperative that one keeps oneself apprised of the new advancements in his area of expertise, and at the same time makes it a point to constantly strive to learn new skills and widen his knowledge base. The extra efforts made reflect a person's quest for rising above the mediocrity and his/ her commitment towards learning. Such efforts never go unnoticed and are subsequently rewarded at some point of time or other. Keeping the current market scenario in mind, it can be conveniently assumed that the more a person learns, the more will he earn!

The most common reasons for people dropping out of or ending their education journey early are time constraints and lack of financial or personnel resources. The reasons could also relate to job responsibilities, distance, travelling constraints, etc. Intermittent breaks are acceptable, but education is a lifelong process and one must fulfill his/ her aspirations and continue climbing the corporate ladder. E-learning is a technology-aided education system that provides a second chance of college education to the professionals. Earning a degree online is the most convenient and accessible way to advance the qualifications.

The advent of technology has provided solutions that not only facilitate effective course delivery as well as guarantee a good teacher-student communication by means of e-mails, online discussions, video conferencing and the like.