Living the Good Life While Teaching Online
by Mark Macneill
ON A MODEST annual household income of just under $100,000 Canadian ($64,000 in U.S. dollars), my young family of four was struggling to keep up with the Joneses. So a few years ago, I decided to make some lifestyle changes and left my career as an investment advisor to teach on-line and work from home. This provided a means to reduce my expenses, nominalize my income taxes, spend more time with my young family, and enjoy the tranquility next to the waters of the Atlantic Ocean. I find the ubiquitous and asynchronous qualities of on-line instructing to be a major lifestyle advantage, not the least of which is the fact that both my wife and I can now freely indulge our love of skiing and water recreation.
I began my on-line teaching career after responding to an advertisement in 2000 by Cardean University in Canada’s nationally distributed newspaper, the Toronto Globe & Mail.
Cardean University, owned by Unext.com and based out of Deerfield, Illinois, is an on-line learning community for working professionals. Through its adjunct recruitment process, Cardean was interested in building a pool of well-qualified instructors with backgrounds from a diversity of regions around the world to provide an adjunct base which was more representative and actively involved within the global marketplace.
At about the same time Cardean was advertising for on-line adjunct faculty in Canada, I was on a six-week work/study/family vacation adventure in the resort district of Mt. Tremblant, Quebec. From my weekly rental three-bedroom mountainside chalet, I was working on a remote access basis from two telephone lines, a handset, and a laptop as an investment advisor with a Nova Scotia office some 1,000 miles away, while commuting three hours through the mountains to Ottawa twice a week to complete my last course in an MPA at Carleton University, which I had temporarily abandoned some four years earlier.
Cardean University finally called several months later. The next thing I knew, I was onboard a flight to Chicago, where I was received by a limousine escort to my hotel in the northern suburbs of Deerfield. Cardean is a university without a physical campus. Their facilities are located in a modern space in an industrial park. Cardean’s adjunct training program, as I soon discovered, was exceptionally well organized, and to my surprise, it was attended by a host of academics from around the world.
I felt blessed. First, the on-line coursework paid in U.S. dollars, and I was a resident of Atlantic, Canada, where not only could I take advantage of a 60 percent currency differential but could also enjoy some of the cheapest and most pristine oceanfront in the world. I decided that if I could syndicate enough adjunct positions on-line to approximate a full-time teaching load of three or four positions, I could live very comfortably in Canada while working for U.S. universities on-line and pursuing a doctoral degree of my own.
So I put my investment advisory prospecting training to good use and began to piece together a network of Web sites dedicated to teaching in academia: AdjunctNation.com, The Chronicle of Higher Education, and HigherEdJobs.com. I began to monitor these and other Web sites daily and had a pre-formatted résumé and cover letter ready to go. My efforts paid off royally. I am now an on-line adjunct and distance educator with five universities and colleges in the United States (Champlain College in Burlington, Vt.; Vermont College in Montpelier, Vt.; Southern New Hampshire University in Manchester, N.H.; Cardean University; and St. Francis University in Joliet, Ill.). In addition, I am a part-time lecturer in a face-to-face setting with two local universities in Nova Scotia, Canada, and I am also currently completing a Doctor of Business Administration in new venture development on an external distance basis with the College of Management at Southern Cross University in New South Wales, Australia.
Since the spring of 2001 I have taught corporate strategy, corporate finance, marketing management, and other business-related courses for a total of approximately twelve courses. I have also completed one course design contact as well.
In 2001, I was able to generate an income of approximately $39,000 working from my home office, principally as an on-line instructor. And as a self-employed individual, I have managed to claim offsetting expenses to marginalize all taxes paid on my teaching income. In Canada, where income taxes can reach as high as 50 percent, an after-tax income approaching $39,000 American per year is the equivalent of earning a salary of approximately $70,000 Canadian per year–and not having to leave my home beside the ocean. In 2002, I expect to earn more because my current teaching load is close to a full load of three to four courses per term.
In the U.S., the average course pays about $2,500, which equals approximately $4000 Canadian. In Canada, teaching one part-time course will pay between $2,400 and $3,200 Canadian. Australia offers an interesting choice of venue for completing a doctorate. First, the currency exchange is very much in favor of the North American (U.S. and Canadian) dollars. Second, it adds a global flavor to my budding multinational teaching experience, and the university programs are fully accredited by the Australian government and recognized around the world. But most importantly, the Australians by their very geographic essence are very efficient at designing and delivering distance education programs.
Life is very good. I recently acted on an opportunity to acquire a 270-acre century-old farm nestled in the North Cape Mabou Highlands located near the beginning of the world famous Cabot Trail. From the deck of the farmhouse, I can watch the local hawk in the evenings glide soundlessly atop the uncut hay in search of an unsuspecting field mouse. From the deck of our St. Margaret’s Bay home, I can watch the local osprey free-fall swiftly into the calm waters of the bay for an unsuspecting fish swimming below. Finally, from the kitchen of my parents’ nearby Bras d’Or Lakes cabin, I can sip hot tea while watching a mature bald eagle perched one hundred feet away on a low-hanging limb above a sea-eroded bank at the water’s edge, cunningly scanning the water’s edge for unwitting fish.
All these resort-style properties are located within a four-hour radius of each other but do require considerable travel and versatility to fully enjoy. While my home is fully equipped with a local high-speed Internet service and two new desktop systems, as well as supporting office equipment, I rely on an IBM Thinkpad for remote access through local telephone service from the two Cape Breton Island vacation homes. The laptop truly has proven to be an invaluable tool in the life of an on-line adjunct instructor. On many occasions I have traveled to numerous locations on business and vacation, including New England, Montreal, Gaspe, Toronto, Winnipeg, California and most recently a four-week trip to Australia with a three-day stopover in Hawaii.
With a laptop in hand, an adjunct will never miss her/his daily obligations of checking e-mails and responding to students’ inquiries and submissions, so long as a proper telephone service is available. And with the growing need for part-time faculty to teach in distance education programs, the possibilities for living the good life are, literally, endless.
