We have recently featured commentary that professors who can’t get tenure should get real jobs and covered the emergence of online college course options.

One adjunct professor has obviously seen the writing on the wall, and is getting rid of the academic administrative middlemen to open a new, online business that will pay him more directly for the courses he plans to teach.

Daniel Fincke’s story about being an adjunct professor isn’t unique — at least not the first part. He spent 11 years teaching at and countless hours commuting to and from various institutions in and around New York City, for low pay and no job security. Years on the tenure-track market yielded no offers. And, like so many others in the same position, he wanted out.

But here’s where Fincke’s story diverges from the common narrative: Saying he can’t stay in a labor system he doesn’t believe in, and that he’s eager for new challenges, he’s publicly announced that he’s leaving academe — but not for a steady gig in another sector. Instead, he plans to expand his online, interactive philosophy course offerings and philosophical advising business. It’s a leap of faith of sorts for the ethicist and Nietzsche specialist, but he said it was simply time to move on.

“I have had semesters where I have woken at 4:30 a.m. to commute from my Manhattan apartment to Connecticut, only to commute four hours at midday to either Long Island or New Jersey for an evening class, and not arrive home until as late as 11:30 p.m.,” Fincke wrote in a post on his popular philosophy blog announcing his decision. “I have worked 6 day weeks. And in the spring of 2013, ran a 7 day a week schedule after I added to my 8 university classes 4 self-run online, interactive classes held through video conferencing. I have done all of this teaching while either researching and writing a doctoral dissertation and/or churning out thousands of philosophical words a month on this blog.”

He continues: “For all these efforts, I have been paid between merely $2,500-$4,200 per section of philosophy, with no health insurance or retirement benefits or any other such alternate forms of compensation (while each class I taught generated $35,000-$105,000 in revenue to the universities). And I’m done now. I’m moving on to the next phase of my life. This past semester was my last one teaching at a brick and mortar university as an adjunct professor.”