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Why so many Saudi jobs?
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Ixchel



Joined: 11 Mar 2003
Posts: 156
Location: The 7th level of hell

PostPosted: Thu Dec 13, 2012 9:26 pm    Post subject: Why so many Saudi jobs? Reply with quote

I've been on here since Dave started it. I lost a couple of user names and had to start over but every once in a while I checked the jobs board. I've never seen so many Saudi jobs listed and especially for women? Why is that? Is it because in the 80's (when I had a few friends who worked there) there was way more money (salaries in the 50's and now they're in the 30's) and great benefits like beautiful compounds. People I knew were making money had over fist and living like kings.
I knew married couples who came home and bought beautiful homes after a few years.
Now the job board is inundated by jobs. Are there just more jobs? Or are people quitting? What's up with this?
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scot47



Joined: 10 Jan 2003
Posts: 15343

PostPosted: Thu Dec 13, 2012 9:28 pm    Post subject: Reply with quote

Expansion plus the fact that no one wants to go there !!

Last edited by scot47 on Thu Dec 13, 2012 10:20 pm; edited 1 time in total
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nomad soul



Joined: 31 Jan 2010
Posts: 11454
Location: The real world

PostPosted: Thu Dec 13, 2012 10:13 pm    Post subject: Reply with quote

Plus, the majority of those job ads you see are with crappy contracting companies. Their turnover rates are high, so they have to keep "replenishing" the supply.
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scot47



Joined: 10 Jan 2003
Posts: 15343

PostPosted: Thu Dec 13, 2012 10:22 pm    Post subject: Reply with quote

But the OP is spot on that years ago it was possible to save huge sums. From the late 1970s to the mid 1980s. Alas I missed out on that period !!! I was not in KSA then but was there before then and after !
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veiledsentiments



Joined: 20 Feb 2003
Posts: 17644
Location: USA

PostPosted: Fri Dec 14, 2012 1:54 am    Post subject: Reply with quote

Another reason there is more need for teachers is that their "baby boom" is hitting university age.

There have also been a number of women's colleges opened in the last 10 years as the families are both allowing and requesting educations for their daughters.

VS
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Gulezar



Joined: 19 Jun 2007
Posts: 483

PostPosted: Fri Dec 14, 2012 9:56 am    Post subject: Baby boom Reply with quote

Yes, and their baby boom kids have grown up with servants. Don't expect much more than a passing acknowledgement from the female students. A colleague was told by a student, "You must be poor. Why else would you be working in this country?" I don't know from where the student got such an attitude. Perhaps the American/Saudi wives have been chatting in the harem about the crop of new teachers who are coming in. Saudi seems to be one place where the students feel that they can tell the teacher how to go about teaching the students. It must be nice to have grown up in a society where you, as a student with a band 4 IELTS score, know more about teaching than someone who has a Master degree in the subject. I'm all about student-centered learning, but at some point I think that there should be some respect given to academic credentials.
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nomad soul



Joined: 31 Jan 2010
Posts: 11454
Location: The real world

PostPosted: Fri Dec 14, 2012 1:22 pm    Post subject: Re: Baby boom Reply with quote

Gulezar wrote:
Yes, and their baby boom kids have grown up with servants. Don't expect much more than a passing acknowledgement from the female students. A colleague was told by a student, "You must be poor. Why else would you be working in this country?" I don't know from where the student got such an attitude. Perhaps the American/Saudi wives have been chatting in the harem about the crop of new teachers who are coming in.

Geez... A major generalization; this certainly doesn't reflect my teaching experience with female students in Riyadh and now in Jeddah. Moreover, the idea that all Saudis have money and servants (and an attitude to go along with) just isn't true.
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Geronimo



Joined: 11 Apr 2007
Posts: 498

PostPosted: Fri Dec 14, 2012 1:51 pm    Post subject: Reply with quote

This population growth chart for Saudi Arabia is worth a peek...

http://www.google.ae/publicdata/explore?ds=d5bncppjof8f9_&met_y=sp_pop_grow&idim=country:SAU&dl=en&hl=en&q=saudi%20arabia%20population%20growth

And, while you're on that webpage, check out
the comparison with Bahrain.
What happened in Bahrain between 2002 and 2007?! Rolling Eyes
Maybe a statistician was fired in Manama at the end of 2007. Smile

More relevant to the OP's question is this line graph...

http://www.google.ae/publicdata/explore?ds=d5bncppjof8f9_&met_y=sp_pop_grow&idim=country:SAU&dl=en&hl=en&q=saudi%20arabia%20population%20growth#!ctype=l&strail=false&bcs=d&nselm=h&met_y=se_prm_enrl&scale_y=lin&ind_y=false&rdim=region&idim=country:SAU&ifdim=region&hl=en_US&dl=en&ind=false

Drawing upon my Academic IELTS Wrting Task One experience...
It shows that whilst the number of
'Saudi Arabian Primary Education pupils'
was slightly below 800,000 back in 1979,
the total had risen to over 3,300,000 by 2010.
That was more than a four-fold increase during the
31 year period.

Geronimo
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scot47



Joined: 10 Jan 2003
Posts: 15343

PostPosted: Fri Dec 14, 2012 3:35 pm    Post subject: Reply with quote

Not much experience with female Saudi students although I did some IELTS testing with them. I suspect that a lot of female students are from privileged backgrounds. With male students there is a huge variance in family bacvkground. Some very wealthy and some as poor as share-croppers !!

We can be fooled by the uniform of thobe and ghutra into thinking that Saudi males are all the same. The unifom hides, as intended, a HUGE diversity !


Last edited by scot47 on Sat Dec 15, 2012 9:40 pm; edited 1 time in total
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Ixchel



Joined: 11 Mar 2003
Posts: 156
Location: The 7th level of hell

PostPosted: Fri Dec 14, 2012 5:52 pm    Post subject: Re: Baby boom Reply with quote

Gulezar wrote:
Yes, and their baby boom kids have grown up with servants. Don't expect much more than a passing acknowledgement from the female students. A colleague was told by a student, "You must be poor. Why else would you be working in this country?" I don't know from where the student got such an attitude. Perhaps the American/Saudi wives have been chatting in the harem about the crop of new

Interesting. Cultural difference I suppose. I'm fascinated by how people live in other places even in my own country FFS. Smile For me working and teaching overseas was a way to see the world and be part of it rather than being a tourist. It was wonderful. Being totally free to travel and do what I wanted was so exciting. I can't imagine the opposite of that. Which I suppose would be to be herded to expensive hotels with one's family. I mean you might as well stay home. I've seen so many things and met so many people and had so many amazing experiences (even the bad ones like spending the night in a brothel in Madrid at age 19 were funny in retrospect)
It's hard to even put myself in a young person's head who'd have such a lack of adventure.
Oh, and thank you for the replies about demographics/culture change-they make sense. I wonder if the turnover is high though and that's why there are constant posts of the same job. I remember I emailed Global Link a while ago and the guy there (Andrew)wouldn't tell me the name of the university until I sent him a copy of my CV. Huh? They have on-going ads for teachers.
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douglas1969



Joined: 21 Sep 2012
Posts: 30
Location: Canada

PostPosted: Fri Dec 14, 2012 11:20 pm    Post subject: Reply with quote

Geronimo wrote:
This population growth chart for Saudi Arabia is worth a peek...

http://www.google.ae/publicdata/explore?ds=d5bncppjof8f9_&met_y=sp_pop_grow&idim=country:SAU&dl=en&hl=en&q=saudi%20arabia%20population%20growth

...


I'd be cautious to make life decisions based on stats. Many a statistician has been full for a variety of reasons. Wink
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powerpuffgirl



Joined: 10 Jan 2011
Posts: 24
Location: UK

PostPosted: Sat Dec 15, 2012 7:45 pm    Post subject: Reply with quote

interesting discussion, but just going back to the original question, its getting more and more difficult to save money in saudi if you have a family and especially if school fees aren't paid- i heard that direct hires in government unis this summer no longer got their annual family air tickets if they worked summer school at the uni.
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scot47



Joined: 10 Jan 2003
Posts: 15343

PostPosted: Sat Dec 15, 2012 7:57 pm    Post subject: Reply with quote

The previous poster heard that "direct hires in government unis this summer no longer got their annual family air tickets if they worked summer"

First time I heard it and I know quite a few teaching at KFUPM. Has anyone real hard information,. rather than hearsay ?
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trapezius



Joined: 13 Aug 2006
Posts: 1670
Location: Land of Culture of Death & Destruction

PostPosted: Sat Dec 15, 2012 9:32 pm    Post subject: Reply with quote

I don't know about gov unis, but I do know for a fact that at least some private unis don't pay for tickets if you teach during summer term.
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jaffa



Joined: 25 Oct 2012
Posts: 403

PostPosted: Sun Dec 16, 2012 8:48 am    Post subject: Reply with quote

The government institution I'm at has dropped the 15% inflation allowance for new (direct) hire expats. Saudis still get it. This year's September intake had been told they'd get it (can amount to quite a few thousand on top of the salary) but when they arrived they were told it was no longer being paid to new hires. This doesn't just apply to teachers but to jobs across the board in health services, engineering, technical, etc. It will make a huge saving for the government and guess who does all the work Sad
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