Job Discussion Forums

[neverheardofem]

Hi,

Does anyone have any knowledge of this uni? I have an offer from them, and it sounds ok, but I'd like to hear some opinions!

Thanks!

[tumdurgal]

A few years too late, but I'm finally out of contract, so can say what I think.

The students are great. So many nice people and often willing to help you out. Management are up and down, while I was there, Ms Sunny was awesome, her replacement, Emerson, not so much. His assistant, Elaine, was much more helpful.

As to the college itself, be prepared to hike up and down the hill. It's steep, and in early Autumn, and early spring on-wards can be damned hot.

As to the contract: they're lying to you.

1. It's not in Fuzhou. it's at least 2 hours away, add in waiting times and walking; 3 hours.

2. You replied to an advert that stated round trip. It's not, it's return journey ONLY, and ONLY to your home country - nowhere else.

3. 2 teachers last year, ending academic year 2015, were not paid the February travel allowance - oddly, neither teacher returned this year.

4. The bi-monthly bonus is actually a bi-semester bonus - if you look at the contract offered, this loses you 2000RMB over the year.

5. They'll offer you international calls, good luck getting that. I was told to book a room in a hotel.

6. You're offered free wifi. This doesn't exist. For your room you'll need to buy a contract from one of the mobile companies.

Basically, this place lies profusely to get you there, once you're there - tough.

[mattyko40]

I was offered a job there and declined. The job is always advertised as 9350rmb a month, which sounds good compared to other uni gigs. They also make it seem like you will teach Econ courses in the ad.

The reason I didn't take the job were because it was a private uni. If I'm going to work at uni. for lower pay it will be public uni.,at least you will receive your pay. They offered the higher rate then the normal 7k for uni work, but I think it was 18 hours a week and no winter break pay. Averaged out it was same as 7k a month. Then there is the clause in the contract about bonus, if 98% of students like you you will get 500rmb. However, if 50% don't like you you can be fired. So, if you start failing kids for cheating what's the chance that you will get less than 50% approval rating? There were many other contract issues. Extremely ambiguous+ private employer+ China= no thank you.

They recently asked me again and I was thinking of taking it because I'd like Fuzhou and I was having problems with job search. When I looked up location of uni. it was in change a different district then the city of Fuzhou, but still in the prefecture. It looked like it was 30 min outside of Fuzhou city, but again there was stuff in Changle and it was near to the Ocean and I saw beaches on Google.

That's my 2 cents take it for what it's worth. The staff seemed nice in the interview.

[Spatula City]

I was working there last year, and here's my review... it's pretty epic, so bear with me.


Housing

The new rooms were nice when we moved in this year, but by the end of the year had serious mold damage. When the weather changed this summer, my walls begin to literally drip and I had to blast the A/C to dehumidify it. If you leave for summer vacation, odds are high that you will have to replace your bedding when you get back… and they don’t supply it for you.

You will have zero true privacy… maybe this is just a living on campus thing, but the staff had no reservations about opening our doors without warning, and definitely were in our rooms when we weren’t there. Someone actually left an orange on one of the foreign teacher’s beds over a holiday, and when he got back his bedsheets were stained.

Living on campus, you will notice that there are cameras everywhere, aggressively confronting you with their presence. When I arrived, they immediately installed a camera looking straight down the hall where our rooms were. This combined with the endless hammering home of the 'DO NOT HAVE RELATIONSHIPS WITH STUDENTS', the way that gossip and rumors flew around campus at lightning speed, and the way admin follows up on every rumor makes you feel like you're living in a police state. Of course, they still expect you to be super happy and outgoing and do things with the students in your free time.

The isolation is insane. You will be living in a foreign teacher bubble inside of a larger bubble of students who are mostly unhappy with the school, and cannot leave the not-so-exciting campus. The foreign teachers last year mostly got along, but I've heard that the previous generation didn't. It only really takes one FT to ruin everything... and the bubble makes it hard to get away from each other.

The students have a curfew of 7:30 Sunday-Thursday and 9:00 Fri-Sat... mostly so they can't buy their dinners off-campus and have to pay inflated prices for lackluster food. The gates are policed by guards who prominently display their riot shields and clubs. Because of the way the students are managed and the surveillance, the campus has a really claustrophobic atmosphere and I honestly felt that it was really unhealthy psychologically. It's really difficult to achieve that separation of public and private life in your downtime unless you make an effort to get off campus, but since travelling is so stressful (especially during holidays) and there's very few reasons to go into Changle, sometimes you don't want to bother.

Students

The students are generally not rude or defiant. There are a lot of rural kids who couldn't get into better schools... the brighter ones tend to have flubbed a single subject. Some even manage to be motivated, but how focused they are usually depends on their major... and of course you will have good and bad classes.

But unless you’re teaching English majors or have decent Chinese, there isn’t going to be a lot of back and forth communication. This is a no-tier university, so generally there isn't so much interest in learning English... just in getting through the course. You'll be teaching oral English in a classroom built ONLY for lecturing... with immovable desks that make it difficult for you to check their work in class unless they're sitting on the end.

English Corner is an absolute nightmare. They force 200 or so students into the room every week... We kept asking the school to improve it, they kept making it worse... finally we stopped asking out of fear. If you love being the center of attention and performing on a weekly basis, you might enjoy it… but mostly, it was dreaded.

The priority is making money, not education... so if marketing the FTs as celebrities puts a smile on everyone's face, they will happily do it. It's pretty demoralizing, but I guess there's no sense pretending that EFL in Asia ever really makes you feel like a professional anything. Still, this takes it to a whole new level.

Salary

The salary is, in theory, decent. It's not 9350, it's 9000 (tax), but for just 9 months... so the yearly total is just 81k plus bonuses, which still isn't bad, but the big tradeoff is the location. Supplementing your income with private lessons is possible, but the fact that you're isolated means you'll have to put more effort into finding them than you would in a larger city... so even the higher salary isn't necessarily a guarantee that you'll be making more money than you would in a different location.

The 98% 'performance' bonus isn't easy to achieve, and they've apparently made it harder by redoing the surveys. The teachers from last year who used to get it didn't get it this year, and I've heard that the students were encouraged to give out lower marks. No one got a final score below 50%, however.

Regardless, you get almost zero feedback about your actual teaching, so there’s really no way to know what they expect or what you can do to ‘improve’. It’s mostly just a popularity contest with cash prizes... and the fact that it even exists, to me, says something about the college.

You will be paid... not always on time, but so far, I can say that you'll probably get everything you're supposed to. There was apparently some issue with really late pay/no travel bonuses last year (as in, a few months after the end of the contract), but since it hasn't happened this year and it seemed to be pretty confusing, I can't say.

You get free food and a special meal on Wednesday, so if you only care about basic survival and saving money, you can definitely do that here. They give you free wi-fi, but it's pretty much unusable. You can get your own rather cheap wi-fi along with the cell phone contract they bully you into at the beginning, but it's precarious unless you're using it when the students aren't also online.

Contract Violations

This was the big reason for my leaving. The director does not care about the contract, and regularly surprises the teachers with things that were not agreed upon. She does this in a 'hit and run' style, where she emerges from her evil lair, tells everyone about the horrible new conditions, then retreats and forces the lackeys to deal with the fallout.

The general rule was that things always became worse, but never became better. If you criticized something, then depending on what it was, she would punish you as opposed to listening to you and considering what you were saying… so there was a lot of bitterness.

If you have issues with a co-worker (we all know what hiring standards are like here), they will think that you’re simply ‘not getting along’, and try to promote group harmony.

Here are some of the ‘surprises’:

-randomly decided to start charging us for the water and power we consumed above a certain limit.
-decided we were going to have unpaid meetings every Tuesday afternoon.
- I just received word that the latest violation is that ALL foreign teachers will be penalized for ONE teacher’s absence… which is totally illegal, but also not at all surprising.
-all teachers must now also teach identical lessons, and cannot plan for themselves.
-English corner was expanded from 50 to 200 students, all forced by the college to attend… many of them could not speak any English at all, and needed translators to be present.

What will the next surprise be?
I wonder…


Admin

The English department is full of friendly people who will help you out. These are the people I ALWAYS wanted to deal with, even though they only dealt with teaching matters. It's actually pretty amazing how they tolerated my desperate need to avoid dealing with the OTHER department at any cost, to the point where I was troubling them with things that they couldn't really help me with. Of course, things like schedules and textbooks were often late or unavailable, but at least they didn’t inspire endless amounts of fear and rage.

The Foreign Languages department/admin is a problem. In typical Chinese style, they are always trying to wring as much out of you as they can get. If you volunteer for something, they won’t recognize your contributions, they will identify you as someone that is willing to do things for them. They won’t buy a laminator or printer for the FT office, but they will stage totally useless and demoralizing contests with cash prizes.

At the end of the semester, we had a meeting with the director and she made sure to schedule it right before the 'bigger, more important' meeting so that it would be super rushed and we wouldn't be able to get a word in. She used the meeting to spring a lot of unpleasant surprises on us, refused to give us any time to respond, then quickly left.

But even worse than all of the testing our limits bit by bit was the fact that they were so transparently manipulative about it. Despite what I assume is years of practice, they're horrible liars. They say whatever will get you to do what they want, and then later when their lie falls apart will tell another lie or ignore you. They often ignore you when you ask for something, but endlessly nag you when they want something.

They had a Chinese teacher sit with us at lunch, join our wechat group and spy on us... we really weren't expecting it so our defenses were down at first, but then as we realized that notes were being taken and word was getting back, we had to start watching what we said. At the beginning of the year I thought it seemed absurd that anyone would do this, but it happened.

And I don't know if it's because they're busy or if it's one of those 'the person on the bottom does all the work, the people on the top don't do a thing' deals, but visa issues/paperwork were almost always more complicated and difficult than they should have been.

They give you 'student helpers' who are eager for the most part, and 'peer teachers' who are a mixed bag but often make it pretty obvious that they resent having to do things for you... one even created extra work for one of the FTs out of spite or insanity or something.

There was a point in the year when we were essentially policing each other and shutting each other down, because we all sort of thought that the best way to avoid being tortured in this way was to shut up and keep your head down... as everything we said ended up being twisted into more work for us.

If we complained that the English Corner room was too small and too noisy, they would move us to a bigger room and then cram 150 more students into it. If we complained that some random person was running around opening our doors, they would lecture us about bringing strangers into the building.

Believe it or not, it's really hard not to want to make things better, especially when the answer seems so obvious and it's so difficult to have a social life outside of the campus. Some of the FTs coming from other jobs had friends outside of the bubble, but we really did spend most of our time with each other due to isolation... it wasn't necessarily a bad thing, but it was really hard to escape and have a life outside of the school. There was a lot of grumbling from the students, the FTs, the CTs, etc... and we were probably all way too involved in each other's BS.

Location

The bad news is you're not actually in Fuzhou. You're also not in Changle, which is where they have to say the campus is because it's not in an actual city-- it's off of a noisy, dirty, narrow road surrounded by construction and some sort of cement factory, a quarry (or something) and some small farms. There is a tiny village (don't know the name) about 15-20 minutes walk from the front gate, and it has a very basic supermarket and some stores... it could be interesting to see once because nobody ever really goes to these places.

If you're looking for excitement or culture, this is NOT the place to be. It's also not the place to be if you're looking for peace and quiet, because the college is so cheaply made that there is constant construction on campus as well as all around it... the noise of the machines became a serious issue for teachers who became increasingly irritable due to interrupted sleep.

Behind the university there's a reservoir which would actually be kind of pleasant if not for the fact that they've defaced the mountains with a massive cemetery that continues to spread throughout the area. It totally covers several hills, hideously ugly plots are all over the shore of the reservoir completely ruining the small mountains, and they continue down the walking trail all the way to the quarry. You can walk on a dirt road up the mountain and into the valley on the other side, but it's not really designed for hiking.

Changle is small, noisy and really not so awesome… but it has a Walmart, KFC, MacDonald’s, IMAX and Pizza Hut. There is a beach outside the city, but you have to take an Intercity bus and you won't want to swim there. There is a handful of Eastern Europeans teaching English in the public schools, some male Russian strippers and a small number of other expats-- I don't think anyone from the university ever spent time socializing with them. You can walk to the city in a little over an hour and there are buses from the campus that take a roundabout route so it takes maybe 20 or 30 minutes to get to the important parts of the 'city'. It's not really the place to go for a fun night out, or to appreciate traditional Chinese culture or anything... just a boring, typical small Chinese city that happens to have some money (I've heard it's from drugs).

To get to Fuzhou, you will have to take a bus that leaves from the campus but only operates when school is in. This bus takes about 30 minutes to get to the point where it can drop you off near Fuzhou South train station, and you'll have to take another short bus ride to get to the station. It’s obviously worse during the holidays.

It also goes to a really unappealing part of Fuzhou called Baihuting (it's seriously like a war zone in terms of noise and ugliness). Baihuting isn't an area that can be enjoyed on any level, so you will definitely have to take another bus or a taxi if you want to do something fun in Fuzhou. On a good day, it usually takes under an hour to get to Baihuting, but it of course depends on traffic, which can be brutal, as Fuzhou’s subway is currently under construction.

Getting to the North station (which is the main station and serves most of the big destinations outside of Fujian) will probably require a combination of buses and/or cabs that will take well over an hour, and during heavy travel periods (including Friday evening and weekends) you should count on it taking longer than that.

Most of the students didn't like Fuzhou for good reasons. At certain times of the day, the buses are super crowded and the traffic is insane, so getting around in the city takes a lot of planning and is really uncomfortable and time consuming. During rush hour on any normal day, buses will be overflowing with people and you will be standing in places you aren't supposed to be standing, gasping for air and dreading the moment the door opens again and someone tries to squeeze themselves in. The fact that the bus from the uni only goes to probably the worst part of the city means you will probably experience the traffic and unbearably crowded buses unless you go in and leave early, or stick to cabs, which will try to rip you off.

After 5pm there are no buses back to the college, and after 8pm no buses back to Changle, so if you are too far away from Baihuting in the evening or just don't want to go back to the college so early, you will either need to spend about 150-200 yuan on a taxi to get home, get a hotel, or party all night.

Schedule


They stick to the 18 hour thing (16 classes plus English Corner)... plus 1 hour or so for the Tuesday meetings (they don't tell you about this).

For the first semester they gave everyone Tuesdays off, which meant you could escape more often if your schedule allowed (Xiamen is relatively close to Fuzhou and much more livable, and traveling on weekdays is sooooo much nicer), but last semester they hit us with a Tuesday afternoon meeting (that they of course required us to sign in for and photographed to make sure we were all there) that pretty much ruined the whole day and made it a lot harder to get out (weekend traffic is miserable). You can't leave on Monday evening, you can't leave Tuesday morning, and when the meeting is over it's the afternoon and the huge hassle of traveling means you just stay put and accept that you're stuck there.

The meeting mostly consisted of the teachers sitting in our 'office' and bitching about the school or talking about English Corner... and of course there was always an English-speaking Chinese teacher present to spy on us. They made us sign in every week and took photos to make sure we weren't faking it.

It served absolutely no purpose (we used Wednesday lunch to talk about stuff, had a wechat group, etc) and completely ruined everyone's Tuesday... but they were absolutely adamant that we attend. This was not in the contract, and we weren’t paid extra. The director was doing it because she thought it made her look good, or possibly because she's a sadist.

The meetings continue past the point in the year where most of us no longer had class, just to make sure our 'unofficial' month without classes still revolves around Tuesday afternoon... and all because of the director's ego.

TL;DR: FSFT is a bubble where you're always being watched by an administration that you can't trust and that doesn't trust you. There is no culture, nightlife, or nice environment. The salary isn't as high as you think, and it's easier to find/do private lessons for more money in the big cities. They reward popularity but not genuine interest in education. There is a paranoid, bitter, negative atmosphere among the FTs and the contract violations are impossible to overlook.

The director is seriously like a Bond villain-- and even physically resembles that woman with the poison knife in her shoe in From Russia With Love. I left because I knew she was evil and would only make things worse, and now that the new year has begun reports are coming in that things are indeed growing ridiculously bad.

MOD EDIT

I've worked in quite a few different schools and while no job is perfect, this one is closer to the bottom of my list simply because of the horrible atmosphere. I think you could probably do worse (simply because you can always do worse), but you can absolutely do better.

I should also mention that some teachers stayed for another year and 2 or 3 stayed multiple years... so I suppose that means something. But rest assured, I think they would all agree with everything I've just said here.

[murray1978]

Sounds like a terrible job. I don't understand why people would stay past a year. If I was forced to go to meetings on Tuesdays or some of the other crap you went through, I would walk out and quit. It seems so demoralizing and why risk your mental health and happiness at a crappy job.

[adventious]

[Spatula City]

[jimpellow]

It was an interesting read. Nothing too shocking for any China vet. Making the punishment for a missed day of work collective was SORT of unique.

I agree with Murray1978 that one should have taken off ASAP to maintain sanity and self-worth. When a Westerner really cares about a 500RMB bonus, he has really allowed the Chinese to become his master.

MOD EDIT

[ghost]

Hello

On paper the college looks great but I guess one never knows what a place is like until one works there. Below, in blue italics - the good review about the college. Spatula highlighted some of the issues that some teachers might face if deciding to work there.

Founded in 2004, Fuzhou University of?International Studies and Trade was upgraded into a non-government sponsored regular university upon approval by the Ministry of Education in 2011, and now?it is the initiative and vice-president unit of the National Non-profit Privately-run Institutions of Higher Learning.

The?University?is located in Changle City of Fuzhou, the Capital of Fujian. Changle, a portal of Fuzhou, has long been known as a “Coastal Cultural City”. Situated at the foot of mountains, the campus is designed to fit into the beautiful scenery around. The campus covers an area of more than 1,200 mu (80 hectares) with building area of 440,000 square meters and owns the equipment with the total value of more than RMB 63 million yuan for teaching and scientific research, over 1.4 million paper books, and 120,000 electronic books.

Actively promoting the education concept of “Benevolence in mind, in words, and in action”,?FUIST is prioritizing on offering education with good intention and cultivating talents to the highest standard. With the comprehensive implementation of the development strategy – “Building the?University with quality, strengthening the University with talents and prospering the University with characteristics”, the University has been striving to be a private application-oriented university well known nationwide with distinctive characteristics, powerful overall strength and high teaching capacity, and focusing on the cultivation of high-quality practical talents who have solid theoretical basis, excellent practical ability, high moral standards and innovation spirit .

The University has 24 undergraduate?majors; including English, Translation, French, Japanese, International Economics and Trade, Economic Statistics, Financial Engineering etc., covering discipline categories such as Economics, Literature, Management, and Art etc. The University has more than 14,000 full-time students. Now the University has more than 800 teachers and 45 teachers from over ten foreign countries such as Britain, United States, France and Japan as well as teachers from Taiwan, Hong Kong and Macao.

The University is among the first batch of pilot universities in Fujian Province cooperating with Taiwan universities in running schools and attaches great importance to international exchanges and cooperation between Fujian and Taiwan. The University has successively established teaching and scientific research cooperation with Massey University in New Zealand, Plymouth University in UK, Stony Brook University in United States, Dhurakij Pundit University in Thailand and Taiwan ChungYuan Christian University, Mingdao University, Shu-Te University and other universities.

With unremitting efforts, the University is widely recognized by all social sections for its high education quality and fruitful education achievements, and enjoys higher popularity and reputation. The University has successively been conferred with a myriad of honors, such as “Outstanding Privately-run Institution of Higher Learning in China”, “Outstanding University of Moral Progress” in the 10th and 11th selection of Fujian Province, “Outstanding Institution of Higher Learning in Fujian for Excellent Work in Employment Guidance for New Graduates”, “Outstanding Organization of Vocational Education of Fujian” and “Safe Campus”. Besides, our university has been covered from multiple angles by a number of mainstream media including CCTV, China Education Daily, People's Daily, China Economic Net, etc.

Standing at a new starting point, we will continue adhering to the motto of the University – “achieving mastery through integrating the essence of eastern and western education philosophies” and the spirit of “Virtue, Diligence, Practice, Innovation” to move towards the grand goal of “Centurial FUIST, First-class education institution”!

[LarssonCrew]

Isn't that review just codswallap that the school themselves have provided?

[Spelunker]

Not sure, but a China veteran like yourself should be able to read between the lines well enough. What sayeth thee???

[ghost]

[wangdaning]

I have students who express a desire to learn English. Given the number of years studied compared to the level of development (I teach first year uni) I highly doubt most could pick up Spanish or French considering they have even less exposure to it.

[Spelunker]

[ghost]