Job Discussion Forums

[twowheel]

[bograt]

[twowheel]

[taikibansei]

[mitsui]

Whatever. I have lived here for 16 years and post what I see as I work in Kanto. I talk to many people and some struggle more than I do.
Especially if the spouse has any health problems.
I can understand why they don't go back to the US.
Health care is better in Japan.

Things are worse than they used to be. Most jobs are in Kanto.
I wish that was not the case.
In fact there are students where I teach in Yokohama who are fed up and actually want to leave Japan since they see the writing on the wall.

If I get a good job and make money, I would like that and I could mention it.
I still look for work and will apply for more jobs soon.
If I was single I could move around to where the work is.
Teachers have to be more flexible than they did in the past.

But frankly it seems certain people are living in a bubble. It reminds me of the divide in the US. It is like blind people feeling an elephant.

[victory7]

[scrying]

"For taiki one more time - I WAS in Japan when it was common for universities to hire people with the basic degree in English or Politics or Economics or whatever. This is the point - those people at THAT TIME got their foot in the door thru no more than being around or having a friend who knew a university was looking for a native English speaker.

It went from there. The bar was so low compared to now, and that was about before 2007. I've known more than a few very ordinary English speakers who worked at companies through the 'there's a job going at...............' grapevine and also got their chances at universities and junior colleges the same way. "

I'd second victory7 on this. I've personally watched the OB network in Nagoya do exactly that for years. Several decided to get their additional degrees later (after having secured their jobs, and a degree of financial security to help pay for it, during the gold rush era), but heaven forbid someone approach that tower now, excepting their personal friends, of course.

[kzjohn]

My school has hired three people recently--one started this term (September), and the other two will start in April. The admin stipulated MA in TESOL, and got it. They're on the five year plan, but with the opportunity to become regular.

Since they're going into a brand new department (starting in April) hiring had to be done early, so that 文科省 could approve them. (Their interviews & demo classes were done in Oct 2015.)

~~~~~

As mentioned above, there's a push from on high for uni to cut down on part timers. I've heard that one goal for the new department is to try to have full timers do everything--and the drafts I've seen for next year's 時間割 show exactly that happening. (Whether it can be sustained in future years...?)

~~~~~

[taikibansei]

Man, and here I am, without local contacts yet still somehow working full-time with tenure at a Japanese university--my third such hire over my career. (I've moved back to the States twice to take on university gigs there, including a stint as Dept. Head at a state university.) I started my most recent position here just a few years ago.

This means I've been hired from overseas to tenured positions three times...without a single friend on staff. If I'd read and believed just the posts here, I would not even have applied. I mean, why bother, right?

And you know, it isn't just me getting jobs without having friends on staff. Heck, my pm saved box for this site contains a pretty long list of people who have gotten similar positions. Often, people read my posts here and contact me privately, asking for help on applying, about the conditions offered, etc. Too bad they don't post to this forum anymore....

As long as we're reminiscing about the "good ol' days," I want to recommend Ivan Hall's Cartels of the Mind--particularly the "Academic Apartheid" chapter--for actual statistics about hiring practices and conditions in the 1980s and 1990s. It was brutal period, particularly the 外国人教師 mass firings of the 1990s. Never heard of this? This was when MEXT told the universities to fire all foreigners over the age of 50...or else. And so, the universities did. Pretty much all of them. I know people who lost their jobs in this gutting, lots of people.

My point is that there never were good ol' days. The job market here--everywhere--has always been unfair. Have "unqualified" people been hired at universities in the past? Sure. Are unqualified people working somewhere right now? Of course (though I still want that Tokyo university's name). Will unqualified people be hired in the future? Yep. Do people sometimes get university jobs through the influence of friends and/or advisers? Of course.

Still, what country is this not true of? Better not say the US--that Dept. Head position was gotten partly through the influence of my friend. Moreover, it is absolutely brutal finding full-time teaching work in the States now. Over half of PhDs in most fields in the humanities will never find full-time work related to their degrees. Never. (Those with just the MA need not even apply....) And if you do get hired? Salaries in the humanities have been stagnant for years, while the teaching loads (and service requirements) have gone up. Seriously, if you want to read something really depressing, take a look at the Chronicle of Higher Education job discussion forums for current takes on higher education hiring trends in the States: http://www.chronicle.com/forums/

And as for teaching in other venues State-side....I have two cousins teaching high school in NYC--man, the stories they tell about their jobs. (You guys think you have it tough now?!) And with exchange student numbers dropping throughout the country, contract positions at university ESL programs are being cut completely (or turned to part-time). As I've mentioned before, friends of mine have recently lost their ESL jobs, sometimes without warning and after years of service.

For the hundredth time, I don't like the situation anymore than any of you. What bothers me is not just the post after post after post after post after post of doom and gloom, but the attacks on anybody daring to share otherwise--kzjohn and I were called "geezers" from the start of this thread--not to mention the continued disparaging of those who have found good jobs. This is why so many long-termers have stopped posting to this forum. (My thanks to the latter for their continuing pms of support.)

Good luck to you in your various job searches.

[scrying]

To be clear, I wasn't referring to the pulling of qualified people via personal networks or vetting, that's a bit different in my opinion, and the result of networking, which is a laudable skill.

I was referring solely to nominally "unqualified" people (no MAs, for example) who have gotten jobs simply because they've had friends in places to pull for them over more "qualified" applicants. It does happen, I've friends who have university teaching experience solely because of it. They're are good educators, and have become credits to the profession, but for some of those same people to turn around and utterly dismiss others applying simply because they weren't able to get in while the getting was good, is what frosts my onions.

Personally, I don't have a dog in the fight, having secured my bones where I am. I just like keeping a finger on the pulse

[taikibansei]

[Nagoyaguy]

Fellow Nagoya poster here:

I agree that the "who do you know" network is still alive and well, at least as far as part time classes go. I get asked constantly "do you know anyone free on (insert day/time)?" by colleagues. The difference these days is that proper qualifications are expected- M.A. or MEd, some teaching experience in university, and so on. Full time gigs are usually another matter entirely. They are done by the Japanese staff at most universities, with little input from their foreign coworkers.

There ARE a few guys in town I know that don't have Masters' degrees, but are teaching at the university level. They are mostly either old timers who have had the same classes forever, or desperation hires for teachers who quit/get better positions. In most cases they are teaching non-majors classes however, not English majors. They are also basically out of the running for more classes and often supplement their incomes by teaching eikaiwa or business English classes.

[taikibansei]

[mitsui]

I am not lying.
The system is rigged, at certain places.
Both universities are in Tokyo.

At one the guy got the job back in the 70s back when there was not much competition. He made a ton of money.
He did learn Japanese, better than me, but he has lived in Japan for longer than in the US.
So of course I got rejected for a part-time job at that school. Teachers are held to a higher standard than in the past. People who beat me out had a doctorate, a law degree or more research. You must be a yes man at such an institution. They don't want independent thinkers.


The other one got hired in 2011. Just had a BA in PE for God's sake.
He had blue eyes and blond hair. It is what they want.
I kid you not. I couldn't believe it and so asked a couple teachers and found out that it is true. He worked at a high school but he just went through the motions. It showed me that if you don't ever give your opinion you can go far, and that it matters not whether you can teach or not.
Who you know and butt kissing does help.

[kzjohn]