Is Online Education Based on “Slave Labor?”

May 7, 2009

A large proportion of tenured and tenured-track professors at traditional “brick and mortar” universities belong to the American Association of University Professors (AAUP).  Martin Snyder, of AAUP’s Department of External Relations, recently described professors who teach online courses as “part-time professors who can’t get full-time work and are forced into taking a lot of part-time positions in order to make an equitable salary.

I think there is little doubt that online professors work harder and are paid less than faculty who are members of the AAUP.  One has to wonder, however, if we can conclude from this that online professors are underpaid or AAUP members overpaid?  While I have never been a member of the AAUP, I have taught at both traditional and online universities.  Based on my experience, I think the both statements are true – online professors are generally underpaid while AAUP professors are generally overpaid.

As distance learning continues to expand, online universities will find it more and more difficult to recruit qualified faculty without paying higher salaries.  Traditional universities, on the other hand, must find ways to reduce their tuitions or watch larger proportions of students choose to pursue their degrees online. The business model for traditional universities has a much larger fixed-cost component, so they must find ways to reduce their faculty expenses.

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