First, some background information:
I like to think I have been reasonably successful with my career as a professional online Adjunct. I started teaching at my first college while working a full-time day job, and was lucky enough to get hired at 11 colleges, usually working at several at the same time. I quit my day job in 2005, and since then I have done nothing (from a paid work perspective) but teach online college classes as an Adjunct.
If I add up the time I have spent working at each of the 11 colleges that hired me, I have more than 70 years of combined Adjunct experience and have taught about 600 sections of online courses. I now only teach at one college, and consider myself to be semiretired.
To answer your specific questions:
1) I got my first Adjunct job by walking into the local community college and speaking to the chair of the department I was hoping to teach in. They happened to need somebody at the time and my Adjunct career began.
I got most of my other Adjunct jobs the old-fashioned way. I would go to the human resources web page for a college and apply for open positions in subjects I was qualified to teach. I would also study college websites to identify the department chairs and deans, and send cold emails to them with cover letters and resumes offering my services. Since I was just teaching online I was able to apply for positions at colleges across the entire country. I probably filled out at least a couple of hundred job applications over the years.
Some colleges are willing to hire out-of-town Adjuncts. Others expect the Adjunct to be in the area, or at least be in the state. Some colleges expect their Adjuncts to teach on campus at their college before allowing those individuals to teach online.
Obviously, if you are teaching online, you can be physically located anywhere you have reliable Internet access.
Generally speaking, the courses you can teach at the college level depend on your graduate-level education. You can be qualified to teach college-preparatory courses in some cases based on your undergraduate education.
2) Pay rates are in no way consistent across the country, although they might be consistent within a given small region. Much of my teaching experience is at Florida community colleges, and their pay is poor compared to much of the rest of the country.
When you include course preparation time, grading time, the actual time spent teaching, time spent meeting with students either in an office or on the phone or by email, and attending occasional required training events that are almost always unpaid, the time commitment can be surprisingly high. Expecting $30 or $40 per hour may be realistic at some colleges, but is unrealistic at most community colleges across the country for someone new to teaching. Once you have some experience teaching specific courses, the preparation time and development time will drop dramatically, so your hourly pay rate will effectively go up.
The pay variation can be pretty wide. The best-paying college I have taught for paid more than twice as much per class as the worst-paying college I have taught for.
The workload also depends on the subjects you teach, as well as the way you design the course, or the way the course is designed for you. If you are teaching English and have to spend a lot of time grading term papers, this can be a tedious time sink. Other subjects may not be quite as labor-intensive.
If you are willing to take advantage of technology and use some productivity tools, it is possible to reduce the workload drastically. Many teachers aren't willing to do so but they still complain about working too many hours. I was able to find productivity tools and processes that saved me 30 or 40 hours every week compared to doing the work manually.
Some colleges require individual instructors to develop all of their course content on their own. Some colleges give individual instructors all of the core content and just tell them to teach the given content. Some colleges will be a combination of the two extremes.
3A) Some advantages of Adjunct teaching include:
* Teaching can be a rewarding career.
* It can be done while still working a different full-time career. If you plan to teach in the future, it may be a good idea to start teaching while you are still working full time just to get some experience.
* If you are teaching online, it can be done anywhere you have reliable Internet access. I have done lots of traveling and kept up with my teaching work while traveling. These days, Internet access is pretty reliable in most places - but not every place. I have done a little bit of work from cruise ships, but have found that cruise ship Internet access is either slow, expensive, or both.
* If you are teaching at a college local to where you live, you may get some benefits for being on the faculty, such as discounts to local retailers, or use of campus facilities such as the library or the fitness center.
* As an Adjunct faculty, you may be eligible for software discounts from major software publishers or through the college itself.
* One reason I was able to teach such a large workload is because in many cases I was able to teach multiple sections of the same course at different colleges. There is much less course development work involved teaching 10 sections of one class than there is teaching 10 different classes.
* Adjuncts are generally insulated from most of the organizational politics, which is often a good thing.
* If you have Adjunct experience at a particular college, and a full-time position opens up, it may (but may not) give you a leg up if you are interested in a full-time position there.
3B) Some disadvantages of Adjunct Teaching Include:
* The work is ALWAYS contingent. Adjuncts are hired to meet the needs the college has at the time. When enrollments go down, Adjuncts lose course assignments. Full-time faculty will always get their minimum full-time course loads before Adjuncts or given any courses. If a full-time faculty member suddenly wants to teach the course you have been teaching, your course assignments will likely go down.
* The college can let you go anytime, and for any reason, if they don't like you. And they may have to let you go even if they do like you, if there aren't enough classes to give to you.
* You may spend some time preparing to teach a class, and then lose it at the last minute. The course might be lost because it was canceled due to low enrollment. Or the course might be lost because it was reassigned to a full-time faculty member who needs it to reach their minimum required course load. Over the years, I've had about eight percent of the classes originally assigned to me taken away at or near the last minute for these reasons.
* Many Adjuncts want to teach as many classes as they can to maximize their incomes. In some cases, Adjuncts will have consistent course assignments year after year so they can plan on this level of income. In other cases, the number of course assignments can vary greatly from year-to-year, or even from semester-to-semester, with little or no warning.
* You may be required to attend training sessions before being allowed to teach, and these will usually be unpaid.
* You will occasionally be required to attend mandatory training sessions, often on topics such as equal opportunity, harassment, and similar topics. These will usually be unpaid.
* Although I have rarely been treated poorly on an individual basis by any of my bosses, most colleges treat the Adjunct constituency as an easily replaceable asset. Adjuncts need to accept the fact that they are usually easily replaceable and will be treated that way in many cases.
* There is lots of competition for Adjunct work. A former boss once told me that she received more than 200 cold emails every week from people wanting to teach online.
* Currently, enrollments in colleges are decreasing across the country. One reason is because the numbers of high school graduates have been dropping for at least the last eight or nine years. Another reason is because the economy has been doing well in recent years. When the economy does well, people go to work instead of school. When the economy starts doing poorly and people get laid off, they often go back to community college for retraining, so enrollments typically rise.
* The intense competition for Adjunct work, combined with dropping enrollments, is putting a squeeze on Adjuncts at many colleges.
* Most Adjuncts are not eligible for benefits such as medical or dental insurance. I was fortunate in that I was able to get my necessary health insurance from other sources.
* If you start teaching at multiple colleges, the travel time can add up quickly. All of my teaching experience has been online, so the travel time was essentially zero. It just takes a minute or so to log out of one college website and login to the next college website.
* If you teach on campus, you will probably be required to hold office hours on campus. But you may not have an office. You may have to do your office hours in your classroom, or perhaps in an office shared with other Adjuncts, or perhaps in the library.
* Especially at the community college level, most students have jobs and families, and often do most of their work on the weekends. To me, the most important ability of any teacher is availability, and I think it is important to be available on the weekends, at least to respond to urgent questions and pleas for assistance. But not every teacher agrees with me on this point.
In my experience, for-profit schools don't treat adjuncts as well as the community colleges do, and the working environments at for-profits are often more frustrating. There are so many people wanting to teach for these schools that some of them don't care how they treat their people.
If you have any other questions, feel free to message me privately.
