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PhD in Humanities
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kittyfye



Joined: 11 Jul 2005
Posts: 46
Location: was Korea, now Albuquerque

PostPosted: Fri Jan 09, 2009 5:01 pm    Post subject: Reply with quote

Thank you, VS~
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Never Ceased To Be Amazed



Joined: 22 Oct 2004
Posts: 3500
Location: Shhh...don't talk to me...I'm playin' dead...

PostPosted: Fri Jan 09, 2009 8:13 pm    Post subject: Reply with quote

Jesus H. Key-ricst.(Don' really know how to spell it!) hasn't this thread gone on as much as possible???

NCTBA
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kittyfye



Joined: 11 Jul 2005
Posts: 46
Location: was Korea, now Albuquerque

PostPosted: Sat Jan 10, 2009 5:02 am    Post subject: Reply with quote

This thread will go on forever!! :^D
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cmann



Joined: 01 Jan 2009
Posts: 24
Location: Canada

PostPosted: Sat Jan 10, 2009 12:14 pm    Post subject: Reply with quote

Hi Kittyfye you don�t stand a chance at AUB, they take a dim view of new PhD�s but why not try the �University� of Balamand in North Lebanon. They are always looking for English and Humanities Profs. Pay: around $36000 befor tax for PhD's, housing cost to you; $400 per month, they will give you $3000 onetime settling in allowance. Benefits are not good, housing superb, location lousy but nice views, the town is 20 k�s down the hill and no transportation at the weekends so you have to buy a car and they are expensive and academic life 0, but hey it is a job. The English department did have a good reputation based on the then chair who they got rid of, now it�s the pits. I visited Balamand several times when my friend taught in the EFL department and he left after one year, he hated the place. The EFL faculty gets much lower pay ($26.000) but free housing or did then. I know someone who still works there who quite likes it but says that the academic administration is the worst she has ever had to contend with, the Faculty of Arts is run like a grade school!! Sorry I don�t know about other universities in the region I teach in Albania.
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Never Ceased To Be Amazed



Joined: 22 Oct 2004
Posts: 3500
Location: Shhh...don't talk to me...I'm playin' dead...

PostPosted: Sat Jan 10, 2009 12:29 pm    Post subject: Reply with quote

kittyfye wrote:
This thread will go on forever!! :^D


Yeah, VS clipped my ears over my last post here...you people are so "hoity-doeity"...I jes' can't keep up!

NCTBA Very Happy
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cmann



Joined: 01 Jan 2009
Posts: 24
Location: Canada

PostPosted: Sat Jan 10, 2009 1:05 pm    Post subject: Reply with quote

Hey NCTBA ,

If the posts dried up you would have to get a life.
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Never Ceased To Be Amazed



Joined: 22 Oct 2004
Posts: 3500
Location: Shhh...don't talk to me...I'm playin' dead...

PostPosted: Sat Jan 10, 2009 2:50 pm    Post subject: Reply with quote

cmann wrote:
Hey NCTBA ,

If the posts dried up you would have to get a life.


Ouch! And from a GD Canuck! Laughing

NCTBA

P.s.- For the MODs GD= Gosh Darn!
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veiledsentiments



Joined: 20 Feb 2003
Posts: 17644
Location: USA

PostPosted: Sat Jan 10, 2009 3:32 pm    Post subject: Reply with quote

See what happens when you try to be the "thread police" NCTBA? Even the Canadians go after you. Laughing

Kittyfye... I expect that you will have the same problem with a new PhD that those with new MAs have... getting that first job.

Only the universities that have been around awhile need someone in your area of expertise, and then they have been around long enough to want (and get) people who aren't entry level. So it goes... Wink

All you can do is apply and see what happens...

VS
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eha



Joined: 26 May 2005
Posts: 355
Location: ME

PostPosted: Sat Jan 10, 2009 4:31 pm    Post subject: Reply with quote

'....the academic administration is the worst she has ever had to contend with, the Faculty of Arts is run like a grade school!!...'

All universities, all over the world, are heading that way; it's all part of the lemming-like rush to attain 'accreditation', which appears to be based exclusively on accountability and quantification. Both of these result in the kind of bureaucratic pettiness that wastes all the creative energy that ought to be going into what used to be called 'education'. Both spell, as an ex-colleague used to call it, "Death to the Spirit" for both teachers and students. I'm sorry for young teachers starting out these days; I think if I had to face decades of increasing surveillance, teaching by checklist, diminished attention to content, I'd--- well, better not say. It's a grim prospect.
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Sheikh N Bake



Joined: 26 Apr 2007
Posts: 1307
Location: Dis ting of ours

PostPosted: Sat Jan 10, 2009 5:17 pm    Post subject: Reply with quote

Yes, hear hear. All I can say is, when I was an undergraduate in the late 1970s (albeit a nontraditional UG in my late 20s), my professors all had their own individual styles and methods and I enjoyed the variety immensely. Some lectured, others blended lectures with Q&A or group work--whatever. We as undergraduates thought that being part of a university meant respect and autonomy for the professors to teach what and how they pleased. The vast majority of profs were wonderful. If some graded unfairly, others made up for it with perhaps a higher grade than I deserved. Well, the last time I attended formal university (MATESOL) classes was in 1986. My god, I hope US universities have not become what eha talks about. However, Arab-run institutions have not matured yet, to put it kindly--they have absolutely no international currency, and for good reason, so perhaps it is not useful to say that all universities around the world are becoming cookie-cutter mediocre in the same dimensions.
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kittyfye



Joined: 11 Jul 2005
Posts: 46
Location: was Korea, now Albuquerque

PostPosted: Sat Jan 10, 2009 8:55 pm    Post subject: Reply with quote

Sheikh,
To assuage your fears, American unis are still as you describe your undergrad years, at least the ones where I have been are. However, TESOL is a business where HUmanities, arguably, is not. So one is held quanitifiably accountable in that environment.

VS, yes, I agree very much with your last post. All one can do is begin applying once qualified to do so; however, I will be applying with American uni teaching experience, and in my field (as a studying instructor), so that may help.

But cmann, given what you say about this Balamand in North Lebanon place, why on earth would you suggest I teach there?? If I were down and out, maybe, but I am more ambitious than to work in an academic rubble-pile in the Lebanese sticks for less than 40k a year. Sounds terrible!! Now I see why you are in Albania Very Happy. I am, however, not exactly throwing this uni name away; God knows we never know Wink.

For that matter, I could at least teach English language in downtown Seoul for the same money (about 3.75 mil Korean won per month, according to a recent job-post), housing assistance (not free), at one of the top 5 unis, Gonguk Uni. I have yet to see any Engl Lit offers this year though, but two years ago, another top 5 school asked for an Engl Lit PhD, 45 to $65,000, housing provided. That could be real do-able in downtown Seoul; to survive well in Korea, you just have to know what to ignore about it ^_^..

Hey, the life of the thread rages on!!!
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veiledsentiments



Joined: 20 Feb 2003
Posts: 17644
Location: USA

PostPosted: Sun Jan 11, 2009 12:43 am    Post subject: Reply with quote

kittyfye wrote:
VS, yes, I agree very much with your last post. All one can do is begin applying once qualified to do so; however, I will be applying with American uni teaching experience, and in my field (as a studying instructor), so that may help.

I got my MA with a Fellowship and thus theoretically 2 years of teaching experience at the same time. BUT... the catch was that the employers didn't count it at all!! All it got me from Gulf employers was a foot in the door because it was at AUCairo and thus I had been teaching Arabic speakers, but I was considered MA+1 - which was the one year that I taught at AUC after the degree was finished.

Life just ain't fair sometimes!! Crying or Very sad

VS
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kittyfye



Joined: 11 Jul 2005
Posts: 46
Location: was Korea, now Albuquerque

PostPosted: Sun Jan 11, 2009 4:51 am    Post subject: Reply with quote

Wow. Wow, VS. That is enlightening.

Now, obviously your MA is in a TESOL related field, since you say they noted you had taught Arabic speaking students. I assume you are teaching Eng Lang. I do wonder if it might be different in the Humanities.

Maybe not though. One thing I saw while in Korea is the apparent fact that Koreans have no real way of measuring Western intelligence. If you are looking for ajob here in the US, your work, that is, your writing, is a very important part of your application package. If you are a PhD, then your dis may be THE most important part; an award winning dis will open higher doors for a PhD from even a mid-ranked school like my own, for example. But this of course implies that everyone on that hiring committee has read the dis and agrees upon its quality and the importance of the work of the applicant/writer. My Korean employers and colleagues, I do not believe, had any real way to measure such importance.

I don't think that all Eastern peoples come from a "history of philosophical ideas" like we do; the Indians and the Persians may the exceptions. Koreans certainly do not. And so I have found that trains of deductive reasoning are not easy for them to follow--quite simply b/c they aren't a "deductive culture." But we are fundamentally Socratic, which implies a host of things that differentiate us from our brethren in East, deductive abilities aside. Needless to say, if I earn the PhD and then go East again, without an award attached to my dis, I do not have hopes of impressing my potential colleagues with my wit.

One thing that stands out in my mind about being in Korea was the level of humility required of me. Koreans in Engl Lit wanted very little to do with my interpretations, and even disparaged Western interpretations of our own cultural phenomena! Another "needless to say": if I go East, especially with a PhD, it's for the money. What the hell else could it be for?

Perhaps that sounds cras, but it's true. And once financial independence is established, I can take a job in Portugal or South America, where the language is beautiful and they come from the same stories as we, and it won't matter that they only pay $24,000 per year + an apt, b/c my money has been made and saved.
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veiledsentiments



Joined: 20 Feb 2003
Posts: 17644
Location: USA

PostPosted: Sun Jan 11, 2009 5:23 am    Post subject: Reply with quote

Yes, my MA is in TEFL... and naturally I don't know how things go in the white tower end of the campus where the PhDs reside. Cool We're down in the trenches trying to teach the Freshman to be able to write one grammatical simple sentence per paragraph... please oh please...

I'm just throwing you ideas that may or may not be useful in preparing you for the job search.

VS
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temba



Joined: 05 Jul 2008
Posts: 14

PostPosted: Sun Jan 11, 2009 6:21 am    Post subject: Reply with quote

What veiledsentiments is perhaps to polite to mention is that an MA in TEFL is a marketable degree, one that actually has an impact on her job prospects and in high demand and not only in the Arab world. As one who speaks from the �White Tower� at the other end of the campus I can only say that it is time for some hard hitting truths on this thread: PhD�s in the Humanities are two a penny, last year we advertized for 3 positions and had 433 replies 218 of those had PhD�s most from very respectable universities!! We chose those we thought had the most working abroad experience and would be less likely to suffer from �culture shock�, not exactly academic criteria. If you want a good job and to contribute to a worth while field then do what VS did get yourself to AUC and get a degree that has some relevance to the world you want to live and teach in. The Middle East does not need lessons on Machiavelli!! I'm sorry but in your field you will nee at least three years of university teaching experience, and a list of publications that will stand up as if you were going for the same job in the USA. You might find a place willing to take you on but that would say more about them than you.
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