Job Discussion Forums

[camelman]

Does anyone know what the provided accommodation is like for Sur College of Applied Sciences?

[The Steakinator]

It ranges from really crappy to really great, the majority being crappy. I worked at the private college in Sur (SUC) during the 2011-2012 academic year and most of my friends worked at SCAS. I saw the inside of a few of the apartments and they're spread throughout the city, often times you have Omani neighbors, sometimes Indians, sometimes no foreigners in the same building, and for one building, it's all foreigners who work at SCAS.

One teacher somehow convinced Majali to give him the residence allowance provided by the Ministry and he turned around and rented a small villa overlooking the lagoon for something like 250 a month, I heard a couple other teachers did that as well but they all had to furnish it themselves. Another teacher got an apartment way outside the city but right on the beach with the highest ceilings I've ever seen in an apartment in four years in the Middle East and so little furniture that I was tempted to cry for her when I saw it (if all the furniture in the apartment were moved into one bedroom of the two bedroom apartment, then it would have felt comfortable).

There's one building towards the souq by the Shell Station and the main Bank Muscat in Sur, only a ten minute drive from SCAS. It was filled exclusively with SCAS teachers save for one teacher from SUC. The building had the best teacher apartment I saw there and the worst (though I didn't see it, I just heard legends). This one was a quiet person, completely to him/herself, but some paranoid Omanis complained that someone was looking at their women from the teacher's apartment windows (which, knowing this teacher I HIGHLY doubt). Thus, while the teacher was at work, Majali sent some workers to frost over all the windows in the apartment facing the other, lower building. I heard the place was like a cluster of prison cells already and then no natural light from the main windows. After a couple or several years, though, the teacher insisted a bit and was almost immediately moved to a nicer place.

If the housing is lame, complain about it and push hard - you'll eventually get what you want.

[camelman]

Thanks for replying. I've read some dodgy stuff about SCAC, esp Majali, and wonder of it is the best place to live/work with a small family. The salary seems a little low for an MA!

[The Steakinator]

When I worked at SUC, I got 940 RO (including the travel allowance) plus furnished accommodations (that smelt of sewage as the weather heated up) and medical coverage at Sur Private Hospital, who's level of medical care at their best could be compared to that of an inner city clinic at its worst. Sur is extremely boring unless you're fairly quiet, like to read a lot, and love saving money. My wife despised it and she's an Arab. One teacher, before I came, had a wife who got pregnant and couldn't work for the second year. Needless to say, at the prospect of being at home all day in Sur, she insisted they move to Muscat.

Did they offer you 935? My personal experience with Majali was fine, but others have horror stories of him. I wrote a thread that included some infor on him called "My Experience at Sur University College."

The nice thing about SCAS is that the discipline problems are minimal and, because the dean is Omani, once you get in good with him via occasional gifts and flattery, he'll more or less have you back against any student that wants to cause problems. Some of the teachers there complained of being work horses, but that has more to do with them making themselves "be available" while other teachers more or less hid out and were never bothered with anything. It's kind of like in the military, on the weekends, just make sure you're not in the barracks and you won't have to spend your time on guard duty or other mind numbing tasks...

Most of the teachers I knew rarely kept office hours and showed up just for their classes. On occasion, there would be a notice going around about the need to keep classes in for a full two hours as well as maintaining office hours, but no one ever paid attention and the Omani staff were too lazy even care to enforce it. At SUC, the admin was led by Jordanians who were not only rule nazis, but schedule nazis. 8:20 thumb in with a thumb out no earlier than 3:30, though the times were usually shifting. As far as the Ministry of Manpower Colleges go, I've heard that SCAS is the easiest one to work at.

Depending on how young your kids are, the only real option is the Indian school, if the expat Arabs have good connections, they'll send their kids there for 30 RO a month rather than toss them to the incompetence of the local school system. Hope this helps.

[Eijse74]

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