Job Discussion Forums

[Dude Love Japan]

VTC has positions to fill. Unless you're an unprincipled profiteer you won't feel good about "teaching" for this degree mill! Details/explanation will be provided upon request.

[TeacherTim]

Do they still have the same accommodation?

[RiverMystic]

Dude, I think I was one of the people who suggested you NOT take the VTC position. You were taking it for the wrong reasons. - because it was with "adults". After offering my five cents, I just let it go. But I could see this coming.

[celta]

You've got me curious..............

details/explanation please!

[Dude Love Japan]

-TeacherTim, they do have the same accommodation and it's the only thing I miss about the job. RiverMystic, it seems that after about a year you actually haven't let it go and we're all really impressed that you were right.
-CELTA, let me tell you just some of the things that are wrong with VTC.
1) There's a horrible amount of meaningless paperwork.
2) A boss yelled at me when I brought plagiarism to their attention and they had the audacity to deny that it was plagiarism.
3) A student showed up on time for class, swiped his card and left immediately and returned twenty minutes later. I told him he'd be marked late rather than present and he said "F_ck you" to me. I told him to leave three times and he started crying and refused. I asked a supervisor for help. The supervisor told him he could stay, he didn't have to apologize and that he'd be marked present and on time.
4) After incident 3 at one of the general staff meetings we were told to do nothing when students abuse the Class Attendance System.
5) The same supervisor who screwed me over in incident three came to me at the end of both semesters and asked me to alter attendance records to help students pass.
6) To my knowledge the head of the English Dept. at my branch hadn't taught in twenty years and her husband was a retired employee from another branch.
7) New teachers are regularly told to have low expectations of the students.
In one class a homosexual student asked if he could touch me, where I lived and for me to give him a chance. His boyfriend asked me the title of my favorite pornographic movie. I complained to two bosses about sexual harassment and they denied any harassment had taken place.
9) In the same class as 8 and 3 I found out that students regularly swore at me in Chinese and I don't know why they didn't like me. Admin did nothing.
10) After being sworn at, sexual harassment and being told to ignore C.A.S. abuse my nightmare of a Reporting Officer put it on a performance evaluation that I didn't have a good relationship with the students.
11) My Reporting Officer illegally extended my probationary period (or tried to)
12) I got sacked after 8 months and my boss offered me one month's severance pay instead of the three stipulated in my contract. I had a wife and two very young daughters to support and they knew this.
13) I believe I was sacked because I don't ignore plagiarism, because I don't let students be rude to me, because I didn't let them abuse the C.A.S. and so VTC wouldn't have to reimburse half of tuition costs for my MA in TESOL. There was never any indication whatsoever that I was a bad teacher or that my students did poorly on their evaluations (which I didn't get to see ahead of time).
14) They regularly hire Chatterists as their NETs. Chatterists are typically in their early twenties and have no TESOL qualification whatsoever (I have a B.A. in English, CELTA, 9 years of relevant experience and am working on an MATESOL). That's who VTC hires to work at their colleges.
Many more rotten things happened but I'll leave it out because it's personal and probably wouldn't apply to anyone else anyway. What I'm saying is yes, the benefits are good and difficult to say no to and I met some good people there but it's a rotten, rotten, rotten organization, total degree mill and flaming dishonesty. People in HK all seemed to know this already but I was hired from abroad and didn't know what a crap place it was. I mean, I knew the students wouldn't be stellar but I never could have imagined that management would be so rotten.
If you don't care about principles and entirely lack ideals you'll probably do OK at VTC (unless you get the awesome housing that requires you to commute all the way to the New Territories). If you're a sincere, passionate teacher you'll hate your job. I started thinking about leaving after the first semester but I like HK too much, I wanted to keep working there until I found something else in HK. Nowadays I'm teaching children and in many instances they behave better than VTC students. VTC is a degree mill that doesn't give a rat's behind about its teachers or students. It's a business, plain and simple. I have a lower income now and it's tough sometimes but I have much less stress and more peace of mind.

[Honky Nick]

Sorry to hear it mate. That sounds rough!

[Dude Love Japan]

The housing was freakin ideal for my young family and getting pushed out was one of the biggest disappointments of my life, no joke. Still, my MA is more than half over and in a couple of years I ought to be making a high income again, I'll be OK. Actually, for ME the housing was exceptional but a lot of people wouldn't like it. Yes, it's huge and nice and in Chai Wan, a nice, calm place for a young family. But if you're young and like to go out and party it isn't near any sort of night life whatsoever. You might also have to commute several hours each day if you get the housing but have to work in the NT, which would mean getting up at 6 and returning home after dark. What good's the awesome housing if all you have time to do there is sleep? You might also get a roommate you don't like, which happens. There are many more bad things I could say about VTC but people told me things in confidence and I wouldn't want to repeat them. If you're tempted by the high income improve your quals and you ought to get a high income elsewhere but with peace of mind. I also want to state that I pitied certain supervisors, I could sense they knew what they were doing was wrong but felt they had to do it to keep their jobs. Still, I wouldn't want my tombstone to say "Here lies so-and-so. He did what he had to do to keep his job."

[RiverMystic]

[revilo]

According to the Total ESL ad, VTC is looking for:

native English speaker; have relevant undergrad degree (BA English); post-grad quals (MA TESL, mebbe); good interpersonal skills (dealing w/ tyrant students, perhaps?); be willing to meet challenges (like throwing tyrant student outta 27th story window?).

3 years teaching experience required (at grade 10 or Form 4 or above) Can someone explain what Form 4 is?

Salary is on tier scale:

Lecturer: HK$37000
Teaching associate: HK$22000

2 year contract, if you last that long. Performance pay is at the Councils discretion, so suck up.....

Medical insurance provided...and staff quarters on shared accommodation basis in Chai Wan lovely, if you want to put up with the farts from your roommate

It has just enough detail to emit the odor of rat

[Joshua2006]

[Dude Love Japan]

Joshua2006, we're all really impressed that you were right. Meanwhile, their requirements are a complete lie. They hire Catterists in their early twenties lacking those quals all the time. You'll certainly get tyrant students but don't throw them out the window, you're not even allowed to throw them out of class when they're swearing at you and coming and going as you lecture as they please. The benefits are exactly as stated but you're right that many don't last that long and some people don't like their roommates. And what good's an awesome flat in Chai Wan if you have to commute all the way to Tsing Yi or the N.T. every day? Think about it, why are they always recruiting all the time when the benefits are so good? They're great in theory but it sucks to work there and you won't last (at the very least you'll merely hate your time there) if you're a principled, serious educator who cares about doing the right thing. A scumbag who doesn't care about principles and wants to merely take the money and run might be OK. VTC is a degree mill run by profiteers. I had one nice supervisor and I pitied him, regularly doing wrong because he needed the paycheck to support his family.

[mnguy29]

All of this just adds to the countless reasons NOT to take a job at a private language mill anywhere. Anyone who does is just asking for being miserable, frustrated and angry. I saw some of the same things in my first year in China and would NEVER look at a mill again!

[Joshua2006]

I love the way this is all their fault.....and of course nothing you did or didn't do provoked this kind of reaction or response.

All you currently are doing is slating them. Sadly for you and for anyone else who works there as a newbie....you will be a small fish in a very big pond. They are probably the biggest provider of education for all those students who don't pass the DSE, other than IVE, and they know that. They can do what they want and how they want to do it. If you don't conform to that, then that's unlucky for you. That's the joy of multi-million dollar businesses.

I know people who work there and have worked there for a few years. Absolutely no problems WHATSOEVER.....

And students? Low level with no expectations? That's what the rest of us teach in mainstream schools throughout Hong Kong - blame society, not the place you work.

Commuting? Well that must be tough in this vast sprawl of a metropolis we know as Hong Kong

[Dude Love Japan]

Actually, I rocked the boat by throwing a student out of class for swearing at me when I marked him late when he was trying to cheat VTC's meaningless class attendance system. I was also a pain in the behind to management by showing them plagiarized assignments, which they pretended to not believe were plagiarized. So yes, you could say I was naive and I started it by thinking my supervisors would have moral principles. I knew the students wouldn't be HK's best but I was new to the area and despite looking VTC up had no idea what a disgrace to academia it was, least of all because of the quality of the students who go there.

[Joshua2006]