Job Discussion Forums

[sigmoid]

Here's the latest scheme: hire native speakers (volunteers) and pay them the same rate as local teachers...

Vietnam lays red carpet to welcome foreign teachers
http://english.vietnamnet.vn/fms/education/57606/vietnam-lays-red-carpet-to-welcome-foreign-teachers.html

some excerpts:

[LettersAthruZ]

When I had lived in Hai Phong a few years ago, they were doing this s**t!

The local PRIVATE (for profit) University had teamed up with some Kiwi agency and they were sending over these recent high school graduates who had told me that they were led to believe that this was an exciting volunteer experience where they would bring English language knowledge to some totally destitute jungle/highlands village.

They just about lost it when I tole 'em that Hai Phong is the third-largest city in Viet Nam and that the PRIVATE university was a for-profit and, shortly thereafter, there were a few telephone calls back to their program coordinators!

This just looks like a new play on that scam....

[vabeckele]

We are getting it at both ends.

Yes, Letters, this is or was also going on in Danang. Actually the rhetoric is because food is cheaper et cetera, the wages are also lower - Funny. The fees to the students remain the same.

I am getting tired of all of the angles.

For some reason companies, as well as universities lately want me to pay taxes even though the work is under the table. When I think of all of the complications this entails...for everyone involved, jeez - you should see one of my contracts, one of them is really funny. I have two, one declaring tax and the other not so. This, even when the govt. administrator is right there closing the door on govt. involvement. Take this, and the stuff the Anglo Saxon countries are doing, what chance does an English teacher have here? As long as both parties get a new shiny centre or university...get to sell education products, the teachers can go fish.

When has it ever been different? One organisation wanted me to teach for free, volunteer, for a few months. When I found out they were all staying at the Hilton and the classes were all at the Hilton...jeez.

[mark_in_saigon]

I think this kind of crazy stuff has always been going on, and will continue to. It is the nature of the system. I think that organization that has taken over the ESL employment ads on CL here in VN is a similar example. If you send them a serious letter, they will not respond, they know what they are looking for, just these very young, gullible people they can take advantage of. We have all met some of these kids, they come over on a hope and a prayer and get more than they bargained for. This is the way their system is here. I really believe there is a rather thin layer of the market that is for serious teachers, and a more or less equally thin supply of serious teachers. All this other churning around is for the larger share of the market which is served by any and all. It is not pretty. I think we all need to recognize what part of the market we are trying (and qualified) to serve so we can know what our approach should be and what we are up against (and to). All these infusions of non serious/unqualified/non native English speaker teachers just constantly alters the dynamics of the market, as even these (so called) higher level organizations are not immune from the greedy thoughts of how much more money they could make by employing these lower cost people.

I do not see any central authority making the thoughtful moves that would create a solution to these issues. It is always how to improve short term financial gain, not how to create an intelligent long term process for actually improving things.

[mark_in_saigon]

Remember this crazy story from a year or two ago?


http://tuoitrenews.vn/education/22538/vietnam-hub-suspends-project-to-hire-filipino-english-teachers

So now, a year or two later, this project comes to an end. Rather interesting seeing the same bs story repeated about wages demanded by British teachers (10 grand), and so how that supposedly justified paying the Filipinos 2 grand a month.

[ExpatLuke]

Great stuff. Always good for a laugh. Actually even $900 is high for what most Filipino teachers who I've met make. $2000 is ludicrous, but so is 5-10 grand for a teacher. Do Vietnamese really believe that? There's nowhere in the world where ESL teachers are paid $10,000 per month. Really goes to show how uneducated the general population is if they swallow that.

To put it in perspective. I just saw a management position being offered by AMA with 130 work hours a month, part teaching part admin, and they were only offering $2000 per month.

Some people definitely got rich by this scheme.

[mark_in_saigon]

No one believed any of it. When it first came out, expat teachers rubbished this story from sea to shining sea. Even some of the natives chimed in.

Found it very amusing they put in another totally unbelievable part of the story blaming the end of the program on the hurricane.

[I'm With Stupid]

Well there's a massive surprise for everyone.

No doubt these teachers were hired through some sort of agency, which is who the $2k a month fee was paid to, with the teachers getting a fraction of that fee. And I wonder who owned that agency.

But just out of interest, what sort of price would I pay if I wanted to hire a teacher from the British Council or RMIT full time to teach at my school or company? Because while the teachers would be on a minimum of $3k a month for a full time schedule, when you take the schools fee into account, it's probably not as far away as people on this thread think to the prices quoted in that article. Obviously still not $10k though. But $5k wouldn't be unreasonable.

Perhaps this was a pilot scheme for the actual plan, which is to hire British teachers "for $10k" with $8.5k of that going into someone's pocket.

[mark_in_saigon]

A few years back, I was told by someone who was in the VN end of the system that a very well known supplier of expat teachers to the public schools was billing 39 an hour for these guys, while paying 15 to the teachers. The 15 is like the average pay there, perhaps a few get a bit more, and some do not seem to be worth 15. So, less than half goes to the teachers in a supposed straight up "legal" deal. Not too different than the structure of a language center, however you do not have to pay rent or utilities when you send teachers out to public schools. I think these can be very profitable if you can beat back the extra hands reaching for the chicken wings as the tray goes by.