Many people today are asking if there is an income to be acquired from part time online teaching positions because they have heard that distance education is a rapidly growing section of the overall academic industry. The answer is a resounding yes, and it will only become more so in the coming decades. There are ever more college students enrolling in post secondary schools in an effort to better prepare themselves for future employment. At the same time, distance education technology employed by colleges online to offer an online education degree, online nursing programs and the associate degree online is making it possible to fill more and more online college courses with students who can complete the course work from their personal computers. It is this increasing access to higher education that is fueling the growth of online adjunct jobs that are par time, and as time passes the employment opportunities represented by these online adjunct instructor positions will fill the income gaps of many people with earned graduate degrees who are unable to find full time employment in their respective fields or simply choose to work from their personal computers on a less than full time basis.

There are several distinct advantages to teaching online in a part time position. First, the requirements of the position will be less administrative and more oriented towards direct instruction. This benefits both students and the online adjunct instructor in that there will be a more thorough delivery of the academic materials. Second, the free time allowed by the part time instructor positions creates the space to apply for more part time online instructor positions if they are desired by the online adjunct. This ability to scale one’s income as an online adjunct instructor could become very important in the future. Admittedly, the actual cash amounts for each of the adjunct positions will be small, but when several of these part time jobs are combined the total amount of income can be quite considerable since they can be attended to from a laptop computer.

The real advantage of online teaching positions for college teachers is that they are extremely flexible in terms of geographical location and physical distance. In the past, a college adjunct had to be physically anchored to one geographic spot in order to travel by personal vehicle to each campus. This led to a huge waste of time and money since the vehicle required an almost daily outlay of cash to operate and insure and many hours were devoted to actually driving from one campus to another in order to teach English, math or history. As a member of an online faculty, even in a part time role, the instructor can accomplish all the tasks required in an online college course from a computer located anywhere there is access to the Internet.

As the explosive growth of student populations continues throughout the next decades, a very reasonable way to earn extra cash or even a full time income is by searching for and applying to schools that have open part time online teaching positions.