Online Elective Cost Per Student vs. Hiring an Adjunct

TL;DR

• An adjunct buys you one course, taught when that person is available, to however many students sign up. An online elective seat buys one student access to a whole catalog for the year. Compare cost per student per course offered, not the sticker price.
• At 25 students, Elective Genius is $129 per student per year, or $3,225 in total, and every one of those students can choose from 55 courses. Put any adjunct quote you have next to that number and divide by the number of courses it buys.
• An adjunct is still the right call for one course with steady demand and a great local person to teach it. For breadth (five electives instead of one), online seats win on cost almost every time.

Every spring, someone on a small school's leadership team says the same sentence: "Couldn't we just find someone part-time to teach it?" It is a reasonable question. A part-time adjunct feels cheaper than a full teaching line, and it often is. But the comparison most schools make stops at the first number, and the first number is the wrong one.

This post is written for the person who actually has to sign the check: the business manager, the head of school, or the board treasurer. I run a small Christian school, Rosedale Christian Academy in Baltimore, and I have sat on both sides of this decision. Here is how I would lay out the math.

How much does it cost to hire an adjunct teacher?

There is no standard rate for a part-time instructor at a private high school. Some schools pay a flat stipend per course per semester. Some pay an hourly rate for contact time only. Some convert a retired teacher or a local professional into a part-time employee with a fraction of a salary. The figure you get depends on your region, the subject, and who is available.

So instead of quoting a number that may not match your market, here is what belongs in the total. Use your own quote for each line:

1. Pay for the course itself. Stipend, hourly, or fractional salary.
2. Payroll costs. Employer taxes, workers' compensation, and any benefit eligibility your policies trigger at a part-time load.
3. Hiring costs. Advertising, interviews, background checks, and onboarding time from your office staff.
4. Materials. Textbooks, software licenses, and lab or project supplies for that one course.
5. Administrative time. Someone on your staff builds the syllabus with them, observes them, and covers when they are out.
6. Replacement risk. Part-time instructors leave mid-year more often than full-time staff. When they do, you either find a new person quickly or the course stops.

Most schools count line 1 and maybe line 4. Lines 2, 3, 5, and 6 are real, and they land on someone's desk whether or not they land in the budget.

If you want to see how the same thinking applies to a full-time hire, I walked through it in the per-seat cost of a private school teacher. A full teaching line runs $47,000 to $70,000 a year, and at a small school that line typically serves 75 to 100 students across three or four elective titles. That works out to roughly $470 to $930 per student.

What does an adjunct actually buy?

This is the part the first number hides. An adjunct buys one course. One subject, at one time slot, taught by one person.

That has three consequences for a small school:

• Breadth stays the same. If you hire someone to teach Personal Finance, you now offer Personal Finance. The student who wanted a healthcare course or a coding course still has nothing.
• The schedule bends around the adjunct. A part-time instructor who can come in Tuesday and Thursday afternoons decides when the course meets. In a small master schedule, that one fixed block can knock out a required course for the very students who signed up.
• Enrollment sets the cost per student. If eight students take the course, the full cost is divided by eight. If enrollment drops to five next year, the cost per student goes up, and the pressure to cancel the course goes up with it.

None of this makes an adjunct a bad choice. It makes an adjunct a specific tool: good for depth in one subject, poor for breadth across many.

What does an online elective cost per student?

Here is the Elective Genius math using our current published pricing:

Students	Price per student per year	Annual total
10–24	$149	$1,490 at 10 students
25–49	$129	$3,225 at 25 students
50–99	$109	$5,450 at 50 students

The first ten founding schools pay $99 per high school student for year one. There is no close date on that; it is simply the first ten schools.

What each seat includes matters more than the price. A seat is per student, per year, and it covers the whole catalog: 55 courses across grades 6–12, including 31 high school courses in six career pathways (Healthcare, Business & Finance, Technology, Law & Society, Creative & Communication, and Life & Career Readiness). Every high school course is a full semester elective worth 0.5 credit. Every lesson has Meri, an AI tutor built in, so a student who is stuck gets help in the moment. Middle school students can use a $49 Explorer seat that covers all 24 exploratory modules.

So the comparison is not "$3,225 versus one adjunct." It is "$3,225 for 25 students who can each choose from 55 courses" versus "one adjunct's full cost for one course."

The side-by-side at 25 and 50 students

Here is the worksheet I would hand a business manager. Fill in the adjunct column with your own quote.

At 25 students

• Online electives: $3,225 for the year. Every seat covers all courses, so a student can take a fall elective and a spring elective without a second purchase, and a seat freed at semester can serve a second student the same year. Your school could run five, ten, or twenty different electives in one block if that is what students choose.
• Adjunct: your total from the six lines above, for one course. If you want five electives, multiply by five, and then find five people whose availability fits your schedule.

At 50 students

• Online electives: $5,450 for the year, the same catalog, the same block.
• Adjunct: the cost per course does not drop as you add students. It only gets divided more ways, and only if those students all want the same subject.

Divide each total by the number of distinct courses it puts on your schedule. That one number, cost per course offered, is the fairest comparison I know. The online option usually wins it by a wide margin because the denominator is so much larger.

For the full budget picture across a year, including where this line item sits next to everything else, see private school elective budget planning.

What costs does an online elective program still carry?

An honest comparison counts both sides. Online electives are not free of cost beyond the license.

1. A supervising teacher. Someone has to be in the room. In most small schools this is an existing staff member using a period they already have, so it is a scheduling cost more than a payroll cost. I wrote up exactly what that person does in how to prepare a supervising teacher for online courses.
2. Devices and a room. Students need a laptop or a tablet and a quiet place to work.
3. Setup time. Assigning students to courses, agreeing on grade ownership, and connecting the course grades to your own system. Plan one afternoon.
4. Your own oversight. Your school still awards the credit. Someone needs to read student work and know that it is real.

These are real costs. They are also mostly costs you pay once, or costs paid in time from people already on staff, rather than a new person on payroll.

When is hiring an adjunct still the right call?

I would hire an adjunct in three situations:

• One course with steady demand. If fifteen students want the same course every year and you have a great local person to teach it, an adjunct can be the best experience you can offer.
• Hands-on work that needs an expert in the room. Some courses depend on equipment, performance, or physical skill that a screen cannot replace. A welding course needs a welder.
• A relationship you want to build. A local nurse, attorney, or business owner teaching once a week connects your students to your community. That has value a spreadsheet does not capture.

The schools I see doing this well use both. They hire an adjunct for the one or two courses where a local expert makes the difference, and they use online seats for the breadth that no small school can staff. If you are trying to grow the catalog without adding a line, how private schools add electives without hiring teachers walks through that approach.

How do you present this to your board?

Boards approve budget lines, not course lists. Bring them three numbers:

1. The total annual cost of each option.
2. The number of distinct courses each option puts on the schedule.
3. The cost per course offered (number 1 divided by number 2).

Then propose a pilot instead of a program. A one-semester or one-year pilot with a clear way to measure it is far easier for a board to say yes to. If the money has to come from somewhere specific, how to fund new electives without raising tuition covers the usual sources.

Frequently asked

Are online courses cheaper than hiring a teacher? Per course offered, almost always. Per student, it depends on how many students a teacher would serve. Compare cost per course offered to see the real difference.

Do online electives count for credit? Your school awards the credit, so check your accreditor's policies. Every Elective Genius high school course is a full semester elective worth 0.5 credit, with a supervising teacher at your school.

What is the minimum number of students? School licenses start at 10 students.

Can one supervising teacher handle students in different courses? Yes. One teacher can supervise students working in several different courses in the same period. That is what makes the cost per course offered so low.

Can we start mid-year? Yes. A January start is normal. Spring schedules are built in November and December, so now is the time to run the numbers.

About the author

Steve Smith is the founder of Elective Genius and spent 25 years in education before building it. He also runs Rosedale Christian Academy, where every middle- and high-school student uses the platform, which means every budget decision in this post is one he has made for his own school first. Reach him at schools@electivegenius.com.

Book a school demo

Bring your adjunct quote. We will put it next to the per-seat math for your enrollment, show you the supervisor dashboard, and walk through what a spring pilot would look like for your school.

Book a school demo or Start Your Pilot. Current pricing is on the pricing page.