According to a recent survey initiated by the UALE Online Learning Working Group, both tenured and adjunct faculty in colleges and universities express dissatisfaction with routinization and loss of control of their work when their courses are delivered online. Poor pay is also an issue for the adjunct faculty who usually teach these courses.

This survey, prompted by concern that in all the excitement about the expansion of higher education into online delivery, no one was talking about the working conditions of online faculty, was a project of the OLWG and COCAL, the Coalition of Contingent Academic Labor. Sent out by SurveyMonkey during October and November 2012, it drew 132 responses from 36 states and 107 different institutions, ranging from Research I universities to community colleges, private non-profits and for-profits. 

Interestingly, union-based online educators do not seem to share these concerns. Another survey of teaching in a union-based environment is planned.