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Ranking of Korean Universities for Terms and Conditions
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PRagic



Joined: 24 Feb 2006

PostPosted: Fri Jan 04, 2013 7:41 pm    Post subject: Reply with quote

@zpeanut...

That was just one shot. They may have had a load of applicants with MAs and in-country university experience. A lot of English teachers take rural or lower tiered urban university jobs, get some experience, and then work their way into progressively better positions.

If your MA is in TESOL or AL? Hang in there for sure. There are a load of universities around Korea, so pepper the ones in areas you might prefer to live with you CV. It is also good to network.

And just as an aside, there is research that indicates students learn better from more attractive teachers. I start the semester with an apology!
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Spike



Joined: 24 Aug 2005
Location: Seoul

PostPosted: Fri Jan 04, 2013 7:55 pm    Post subject: Reply with quote

Any chance we could get this thread seperated?

The past few pages have had nothing to do with the title of the thread, which if keeping to it's original intent could be invaluable.
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zpeanut



Joined: 12 Mar 2008
Location: Pohang, Korea

PostPosted: Fri Jan 04, 2013 7:58 pm    Post subject: Reply with quote

PRagic wrote:
Yes, yes, yes, and yes! But the point is STTLL whether more advanced degrees should be required to teach English, or by logical extension any foreign language, at the university level if there is indeed an adequate supply of MA holders.

I'd be interested to see the survey instrument deployed be that researcher. More importantly, it would be good to know if the sample was representative. How many student at how many universities at what years? Is there a difference across university levels? Across years? Were these questions and challenges even raised at the conference? Intuitively, though, the results you describe make sence. Students, undergrad at least, say the as much about tenure track and tenured profs, too.

This could become pretty regressive. Why require a degree to teach a foreign language at university at all in the first place? A lot of the BA holders teaching English, after all, don't have degrees in education, AL, or TESOL. English Lit surely can't count. And there must be a load of native speakers who would love to have the job, would really get into it, and would probably then rack up documentable years of experience. Students might recognize their passion and innate teaching ability. Ah, but then someone might suggest that if they want to keep their jobs, theyd best take a Bachelor's degree.


I think an important factor to consider when it comes to the necessity of Masters degrees, is what kind of English is going to be taught.

I had some colleagues back home who only had a BA with TESOL cert, even one without a BA - and they were fantastic teachers, very good rapport with students and excellent feedback for observation.

However, these teachers couldn't handle teaching more advanced courses for tertiary entry or advanced level. It seems the more complicated grammatical patterns and writing styles was an issue. Also, as you may know, once students are better at English their questions also become more challenging.

If I needed a teacher for a general English course, I don't think an MA would be the most important factor. But for a university English course where students are expected to use academic English? yeah, for sure.
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PRagic



Joined: 24 Feb 2006

PostPosted: Fri Jan 04, 2013 8:05 pm    Post subject: Reply with quote

My bad, Spike. It would be great if more people chimed in on the post's original topic. The recent discussion is tertiary.
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Milwaukiedave



Joined: 02 Oct 2004
Location: Goseong

PostPosted: Sat Jan 05, 2013 6:24 am    Post subject: Reply with quote

Unposter wrote:
I am totally for people attempting to earn advanced degrees. Personally, I can't imagine an educator that doesn't. But, I do have a few problems with some of the ideas that seem to be associated with it:

1. You cannot keep up with a field without advancing your education. Complete rubbish. The whole point of being "educated" is an ability to learn outside the education system. Educated people do not stop learning after they graduate. And, an educated person is capable of learning something without a teacher.

2. Doing an advanced degree is not the only way to keep up with their field. In fact, it is a pretty small way compared to reading the latest articles, attending conferences, doing research and interacting with colleagues in the field.

3. Experience means little. Book learning only gets you so far. If you are not actually doing it, you don't really know what you are doing. If someone has a track record of success, then an educated person would want to know why. That is one of the reasons doing a teaching demonstration can be more important than your credentials because credentials, sadly, don't mean you can actually teach, teach well or teach better than anyone else. Teaching is a performed skill that can only be honed by doing it, not by reading about it or listening to lectures about it. Schools and universities who cannot understand this will be sorry when they find that all their credentialed employees don't really teach well or worse not appreciated by their students.

4. Experience is just doing the same bad things over and over again. Just plain narrow minded. For some people, this may be the case, for others, it is just plain wrong and to pre-judged someone that way is the anti-thesis of an intelligent, educated person. And, worse, the same can be true for anyone regardless of their degree.

5. Everyone should get an advanced degree. That just turns an institution into a degree mill and inflates educational requirements without any necessary improvement in outcome for a particular field of work. An advanced degree should be rare, for highly intelligent, highly educated, highly academic minded, highly motivated individuals. Sadly, especially with the plethora of on-line degrees, advanced degrees have turned into a question of do you have the money and are you willing to put in a little time and we will throw some paper at you. This idea that if you just put in the time and pay the price is diluting the value of a degree and inflating the necessity of higher degrees in professions that don't really require them. It may be good for schools and universities but it hurts everyone else, especially people with debts and those who grew up poor (for lack of a better term off the top of my head). The slippery slope is that soon all jobs, even cleaners, will need Ph.D.s. It is just silly. Going to university is going to university. Experience and training should be able to fill in the rest. This idea that people should spend the rest of their lives going to university while working is just silly and only benefits universities.

6. University ESL positions are the same as Professorships in other fields. No, you are hired to be a teacher. You just happen to teach students who are attending a university. You can even find people with BAs and MAs teaching ESL in the U.S. and probably Canada for all I know. Yes, there are real academic positions for English, Applied Linguistics, Education, etc... but there are also positions which hire people just to teach. We should not confuse the two seperate positions and we should look at their requirements differently.

Again, if you want to work toward an advanced degree, please do so. I think there are great benefits to a formal education. I just hope we can examine the issues and needs of the ESL field in a more open and fair manner.


I came to the party a bit late and looked through most of the thread.

I'm going to limit my comment to point 5 about advanced degrees. While I agree a degree is not the be all end all and that experience should be considered, I disagree with what you are saying about institutions being turned into degree mills and inflating educational requirements. Remember the requirements are not set by us, they are set by Koreans. Generally in a job ad they asked for a combination of education and experience (i.e. if you have a lower degree more experience). For better or worse these are the requirements. How well they are enforced, who knows (you'd actually have to track ads and then find out who got hired for the position and compare the ad to the person who was hired and no one really wants to bother with that).

Online degrees are not what they use to be. There are still some online universities with very bad reputations that tend to tarnish the industry. However you will find more and more universities are moving to online classes (both public and private) because of the fact that it makes it convenient for people who work and have families. It also provides opportunities for people further away to enroll in programs.

Many of these programs are being gaining accreditation from associations which are well known and tough to gain.

The school I completed my masters at was a small Catholic school and they offered on campus, compressed weekend (Friday, Saturday, Sunday one week all day and then of course work due later) and online classes. I took each format, though the compressed weekend I only took twice.

Currently I'm working on my DBA and certainly the school is no papermill. I have to complete 54 credits, the classes are 11 weeks each. The number of assignments vary, but usually contain eight, with thousands of pages of required reading on top of research reading.

My word of caution is not to make all online universities out to be online papermills scams. There are those of us who have spent the extra time to earn a higher degree are are ready to invest 4 years of work. No, it's not for everyone.
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I'm With You



Joined: 01 Sep 2011

PostPosted: Sat Jan 05, 2013 10:06 am    Post subject: Reply with quote

Milwaukiedave wrote:
Unposter wrote:
I am totally for people attempting to earn advanced degrees. Personally, I can't imagine an educator that doesn't. But, I do have a few problems with some of the ideas that seem to be associated with it:

1. You cannot keep up with a field without advancing your education. Complete rubbish. The whole point of being "educated" is an ability to learn outside the education system. Educated people do not stop learning after they graduate. And, an educated person is capable of learning something without a teacher.

2. Doing an advanced degree is not the only way to keep up with their field. In fact, it is a pretty small way compared to reading the latest articles, attending conferences, doing research and interacting with colleagues in the field.

3. Experience means little. Book learning only gets you so far. If you are not actually doing it, you don't really know what you are doing. If someone has a track record of success, then an educated person would want to know why. That is one of the reasons doing a teaching demonstration can be more important than your credentials because credentials, sadly, don't mean you can actually teach, teach well or teach better than anyone else. Teaching is a performed skill that can only be honed by doing it, not by reading about it or listening to lectures about it. Schools and universities who cannot understand this will be sorry when they find that all their credentialed employees don't really teach well or worse not appreciated by their students.

4. Experience is just doing the same bad things over and over again. Just plain narrow minded. For some people, this may be the case, for others, it is just plain wrong and to pre-judged someone that way is the anti-thesis of an intelligent, educated person. And, worse, the same can be true for anyone regardless of their degree.

5. Everyone should get an advanced degree. That just turns an institution into a degree mill and inflates educational requirements without any necessary improvement in outcome for a particular field of work. An advanced degree should be rare, for highly intelligent, highly educated, highly academic minded, highly motivated individuals. Sadly, especially with the plethora of on-line degrees, advanced degrees have turned into a question of do you have the money and are you willing to put in a little time and we will throw some paper at you. This idea that if you just put in the time and pay the price is diluting the value of a degree and inflating the necessity of higher degrees in professions that don't really require them. It may be good for schools and universities but it hurts everyone else, especially people with debts and those who grew up poor (for lack of a better term off the top of my head). The slippery slope is that soon all jobs, even cleaners, will need Ph.D.s. It is just silly. Going to university is going to university. Experience and training should be able to fill in the rest. This idea that people should spend the rest of their lives going to university while working is just silly and only benefits universities.

6. University ESL positions are the same as Professorships in other fields. No, you are hired to be a teacher. You just happen to teach students who are attending a university. You can even find people with BAs and MAs teaching ESL in the U.S. and probably Canada for all I know. Yes, there are real academic positions for English, Applied Linguistics, Education, etc... but there are also positions which hire people just to teach. We should not confuse the two seperate positions and we should look at their requirements differently.

Again, if you want to work toward an advanced degree, please do so. I think there are great benefits to a formal education. I just hope we can examine the issues and needs of the ESL field in a more open and fair manner.


I came to the party a bit late and looked through most of the thread.

I'm going to limit my comment to point 5 about advanced degrees. While I agree a degree is not the be all end all and that experience should be considered, I disagree with what you are saying about institutions being turned into degree mills and inflating educational requirements. Remember the requirements are not set by us, they are set by Koreans. Generally in a job ad they asked for a combination of education and experience (i.e. if you have a lower degree more experience). For better or worse these are the requirements. How well they are enforced, who knows (you'd actually have to track ads and then find out who got hired for the position and compare the ad to the person who was hired and no one really wants to bother with that).

Online degrees are not what they use to be. There are still some online universities with very bad reputations that tend to tarnish the industry. However you will find more and more universities are moving to online classes (both public and private) because of the fact that it makes it convenient for people who work and have families. It also provides opportunities for people further away to enroll in programs.

Many of these programs are being gaining accreditation from associations which are well known and tough to gain.

The school I completed my masters at was a small Catholic school and they offered on campus, compressed weekend (Friday, Saturday, Sunday one week all day and then of course work due later) and online classes. I took each format, though the compressed weekend I only took twice.

Currently I'm working on my DBA and certainly the school is no papermill. I have to complete 54 credits, the classes are 11 weeks each. The number of assignments vary, but usually contain eight, with thousands of pages of required reading on top of research reading.

My word of caution is not to make all online universities out to be online papermills scams. There are those of us who have spent the extra time to earn a higher degree are are ready to invest 4 years of work. No, it's not for everyone.


Online degrees, especially graduate degrees, are crap.

Unfortunately, Korea is full of foreign teachers who have online master's, coursework only degrees. Universities, especially those in the U.K. and Australia, have identified a huge source of income by creating these distance and online M.A. and Doctoral programs. There's huge money in it for them and they cut corners and dummy down the degree requirements.
They are a complete joke.

I'm going to caution anyone here reading this thread who may be contemplating doing a master's or doctorate and wanting to teach EFL in Korea: (1) Do a residency and (2) Write a dissertation / thesis component. Otherwise, expect your degrees to be viewed with suspicion.
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HapKi



Joined: 10 Dec 2004
Location: TALL BUILDING-SEOUL

PostPosted: Sat Jan 05, 2013 5:17 pm    Post subject: Reply with quote

Quote:
Online degrees, especially graduate degrees, are crap.

Unfortunately, Korea is full of foreign teachers who have online master's, coursework only degrees. Universities, especially those in the U.K. and Australia, have identified a huge source of income by creating these distance and online M.A. and Doctoral programs. There's huge money in it for them and they cut corners and dummy down the degree requirements.
They are a complete joke.

I'm going to caution anyone here reading this thread who may be contemplating doing a master's or doctorate and wanting to teach EFL in Korea: (1) Do a residency and (2) Write a dissertation / thesis component. Otherwise, expect your degrees to be viewed with suspicion.



I have a distance MA from a top 10 UK university. I also had to do a six month, 12,000 word dissertation. Articles stemming from my dissertation have been published in nationally accredited academic journals. At graduation, I sat in at my commencement. My diploma looked exactly the same as on-campus graduates (I looked), most of whom looked to be in their low twenties and probably had no classroom experience. I, on the other hand, had been working and applying what I was learning directly into my classroom teaching context. My MA has helped me significantly with job promotions and academic advancement, and there has been no mention of shortfalls or airs of suspicion (except on this website, of course).
The above poster has some kind of agenda, but unfortunately is speaking utter nonsense. I was VERY lucky I did not take his kind of "advice" years ago when I made my decisions.
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PRagic



Joined: 24 Feb 2006

PostPosted: Sat Jan 05, 2013 5:39 pm    Post subject: Reply with quote

X1000
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Paddycakes



Joined: 05 May 2003
Location: Seoul

PostPosted: Sat Jan 05, 2013 7:17 pm    Post subject: Reply with quote

Most of the guys I've met have on-line MA's from uni's in Australia.

What's the rep of the on-line Australian MA programs?

I personally think an on-line degree is a risky investment, unless you plan to stay in Korea forever.

I've heard countries like Taiwan are cracking down on on them... basically if you want to work in a uni there they won't accept an on-line MA.

I don't see that happening in Korea ever as it would result in 90 plus percent of all the uni English instructors losing their jobs.


That said, I'd be curious to know what it like transitioning back to your home country with an on-line MA.

If you apply for a college job in the US and you show them your on-line MA from the University of Northern Australia, or wherever, do they respect or do they just laugh you out of the room?
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PRagic



Joined: 24 Feb 2006

PostPosted: Sat Jan 05, 2013 7:58 pm    Post subject: Reply with quote

That buddy of mine who is a university ESL program director back in Canada now got his MAs, one in TOFEL and one in AL, fom an Austrialian university. Think it was Queensland? I think he had to write theses, but I can't recall as this was a while ago. He also had his CELTA, DELTA, and other advanced certs for specialized training like pronunciation/phonetics. His undergrad was in education from a top Canadian university, although it was in...physics! Bright guy to say the least.

He's always been serious about what he does for a living. I remember him being way ahead of the pack when it came to using on line tools like Moodle.

In a nut shell, his degrees and certs plus his years of university experience landed him the job. Everyone that knows him has no doubt that he's rockin it.
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I'm With You



Joined: 01 Sep 2011

PostPosted: Sun Jan 06, 2013 8:24 am    Post subject: Reply with quote

PRagic wrote:
That buddy of mine who is a university ESL program director back in Canada now got his MAs, one in TOFEL and one in AL, fom an Austrialian university. Think it was Queensland? I think he had to write theses, but I can't recall as this was a while ago. He also had his CELTA, DELTA...


His having a CELTA / DELTA speaks volumes about the level of professionalism he likely has towards teaching ESL / EFL. Australian university master's degrees, however, are dodgier than shit. He's done well, though, and probably within the top 5% of qualified people in this racket.

I do not expect people who earned distance master's degrees to berate their programs. But I've seen where a few people were honest and forthright in their evaluation of such degrees - e.g., Birmingham, University of Southern Queensland, etc.

These distance degrees are a mockery of the traditional graduate degree and the schools that award them are nothing more than degree mills.
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jennykwon



Joined: 19 Aug 2012

PostPosted: Sun Jan 06, 2013 10:53 pm    Post subject: Reply with quote

Well if some of you don't see the value of MA degrees, why don't you start your own school and hire only BA holders? Problem solved!
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