The challenge facing educators with graduate degrees is economic in nature. The problem now is that declining budgetary funds dedicated to public education are disappearing at an alarming rate, and it is now clear as a bell that online teaching is a path to professional and personal sustainability for teachers that can deliver instruction on the Internet to college and university students enrolled in online bachelor degree programs and online masters degree programs. It is understandable that many public school employees are shocked by the events currently occurring in the academy at all levels, but the seriousness of the situation requires an immediate solutions since a return to the physical classroom is drifting future into the distance. The reason the physical classroom is not the place to earn a living as an educator is that distance education technology is a much less expensive vehicle for the delivery of post-secondary instruction. Of course, traditional adjunct faculty members at community colleges and state universities have been aware of the penetration of online college classes for the last decade. The academics that realize that accredited distance learning programs are the future of post-secondary instruction have taken advantage of the benefits offered to educators by online teaching and are now poised to accelerate their earning as a result of mastering the navigation of the Internet and the distance education interfaces that exist solely on it.

Teaching online as an online adjunct instructor is quite different from being a state public education employee. The primary difference is that the instructor is required to manage his or her online teaching portfolio as if it is a client list, as opposed to a single government employer. For many educators with a Ph.D. or master’s degree this is a radical departure from what was taught in graduate school. However, it is of the utmost importance for any person desiring to earn a sustainable living, which means actually generating enough income to pay the bills and still have something left over each month to put away for later, from teaching to grasp the availability of the online masters degree in school counseling, the online computer science degree and the online business administration degree. The fact is that student populations at community colleges, state colleges, for-year universities and for-profit colleges are growing daily as result of the economy, and the need for technically prepared and academically qualified online adjunct instructors is also growing as a result of this increase in enrollment in online college degree programs.

The best approach for discovering availability of online teaching positions is to use a personal computer to visit the thousands of academic websites on the Internet. Every post-secondary academic institution now has a website that contains a faculty application section. Once inside that faculty section, and it may take some looking around in the site to find it since every school has its own interface, it is an easy matter to submit the necessary academic credentials to be considered for online adjunct jobs with that college or university. Eventually, a positive response from one or more schools will be received by the prospective online adjunct college professor, and at that point the online teaching schedule will start to produce income in varying amounts.