Job Discussion Forums

[juanjose]

In general, Chinese teachers do work more hours than we do. As to salary, a lot of Chinese teachers laugh at the foreign teachers for how little money they are actually making.
You have to distinguish between a teacher's regular salary, which is less than a foreign teacher's, and their total compensation per year in salary and "grey" money.
To start, many teachers teach during the summer and charge 100 yuan per student per class. I had an ex-gf English teacher who earned 30,000 yuan every summer. In order to ensure that their students are given extra "help," parents put on lavish dinners for teachers or give them a hong bao. A parent once gave me a 500 Yuan gift certificate. Chinese teachers get paid for all 12 months of the year; I don't. They get a pension; I don't.
They get real health insurance, a stipend for their homes, student gifts, etc.
I have seen my colleagues drive onto campus in their brand new cars, and tell me that they just bought a new house. Then later in the day they lament on how little they learn and how much I earn. I once told one teacher that I really knew how much she earned from other channels, and she never brought up the subject again. Don't ever feel sorry for your salary. Your actually only in the mid-range.
My proof comes from talking to my Chinese colleagues, those that trust me.
My boss at the school I work at is the best English teacher here. Last summer the principal gave her a brand new car.

I don't know how things work at private centers.

[muffintop]

[rogerwilco]

In Nanjing I dated a CT that worked at a language center. Her ambition was to save up enough money to buy a job at a public middle school. The cost being one year's salary, about 50,000RMB

She wanted the public school job because she knew that she would clear at least 25,000 a month, plus other benefits.

The CT's do spend a lot more hours than we do in the office, but I rarely see them doing anything other than Taobao, QQ, and sleeping.

In Anhui I worked with a Chinese high school math teacher that would require his students to attend classes at his apartment every weekend.
Just from that he cleared 5,000 a week. (100 students x 50RMB)
Attendance was not required, of course, but the weekly fee was.

The middle and high school CT's are the ones that have most of the opportunities to ask the students for extra money due to the claims of preparing them for the gaokao.

[NP1970]

My neighbor teaches at Beijing High School No, 19 in Haidian and I asked her once about her salary. She said she makes 10,000 a month and she has been teaching there 3 years (full time).

I'm not sure about the teachers, but I know the Principals make a small fortune with all the kick-backs they get from music schools, art schools, school books, tutors, and teacher agents for all the referrals they get paid to make or accept. I found this old article a bit amusing...

http://chinascampatrol.wordpress.com/2013/02/21/making-your-first-million-in-china-as-a-chinese-school-principal/

[muffintop]

Oh hey! Another domain you happen to own. I am sure the article will be as believable as the others you link to!

[Markness]

Hey! Let's play a game. It's called "let's make exceptions the new rule".

[Markness]

And the reason I posted the snarky remark is that if this thread is indeed legitimate then people need to open their eyes. 1. It's China, people lie to make themselves look better, foreigners and Chinese are guilty of this. This guy I knew (foreign teacher) claimed to be making 40,000RMB a month, and this was what he was telling everyone, he did this to get chicks. Chinese dudes probably do the same. They aren't telling the truth. 2. If they are honest, they are the exception, not the rule. There are way more English-speaking Chinese teachers than native English teachers, hence the higher pay to the native English teacher. Supply/demand.
3. People who are raking in a ton of cash are the exception and not the rule. This goes for native and Chinese teachers. If you think otherwise then you live in a dream world.

Finally, let's stop the "pity me" thread, that seems to be the intention of this thread.

[muffintop]

[Markness]

Hey Muffintop,

I appreciate the reply. Perhaps I didn't have enough coffee in the morning, or maybe I had too much. I am just trying to do the math here. Every experience that i've had that i've talked to the CTs, they've claimed that they we're getting 1/2 to a 1/3 of my salary, and they weren't saying it to be nice to me and make me feel better about myself. I never ever ask about people's salaries, maybe it's just how I have been raised, but the topic comes up so often around these parts with the Chinese. They also work nearly everyday, and work 12 hour days instead of the 15 teaching hours I get a week which accumulates to approximately 3 hours a day.

While I was in university in Canada, all the Chinese students I know would ask me how well I would do if I were to teach in China, I pulled up the salaries from the daves website and showed them, and they were really surprised at how high it was compared to the types of jobs they were able to get, and these people take on more sophisticated occupations than teaching, not to say that teaching is not a great occupation, but they were engineers and such. An another thing that doesn't add up is that my Chinese professor in Canada was doing alright there, and in China she worked in a university in Harbin and did a brief stint at Peking. If there salaries were as high and as the norm as people here make it seem, then why would they take off to a middle-class lifestyle in Canada? She loved China, and she wouldn't have left if the pay was as good as advertised here.

I'm sorry, perhaps my sample is too small and I am delusional, but my experiences and others say otherwise. But maybe I am wrong, and if that's the case then I apologize.

[roadwalker]

[muffintop]

[bobdaun]

Firstly its important to make the distinction between training school CTs and university / public school CTs.

CTs in training schools are like employees in any other Chinese company - the majority of them are relatively poorly paid, and with little or no job security. Their average pay was less than half the FTs, and they regularly had their hours changed, etc. If they didn't like it, there was nothing they could do about it. A classic case of supply and demand - if they made trouble, well there are a dozen other university graduates who would love to do the job. A couple of good fiends of mine work in training schools and neither of them makes more than 3000 per month.

In public institutions the situation CAN be different - please note, CAN, but not necessarily IS. Of course deans, vice deans, heads of departments, full professors etc. are generally well-off, and some of them roll around in very nice cars. This is the same the world over. Heads of big colleges in the States may have compensation packages which run to well over $1,000,000 per annum.

However, to suggest that ALL CTs in universities and high schools are coining it is simply not true. I know for a fact that the CTs in my university department used to get paid less than half of what I earned (I was in charge of recruiting teachers and so I know what we paid them). Of all the teachers in my department, only one had a car, and that belonged to her husband who was moderately well-off and had his own business. All the other teachers took the bus to work, including my boss, who not only didn't have a car, but didn't even own an apartment.

Recently there were some changes at the top in my university and the dean of my department got sacked. All the CTs also got sacked, most of them with no compensation, as they didn't have proper contracts. They are not alone in this - a friend of mine was working for another college in my city for two years without a proper contract.

There may well be some CTs who make a lot of extra money through guanxi or corruption, but to imply that all of them are extremely well off is simply wrong. There may be other CTs who make a lot of extra money by doing massive amounts of extra tuition outside school hours (I know a few myself), but in this case they earn that cash by there own hard work. There is nothing to stop FTs doing the same (I know there are potential legal issues, but you can always get 150 rmb per hour teaching over Skype and get paid into your foreign bank account, thereby sidestepping most of these hassles), but whenever anybody on the forum suggests that FTs use their spare time like this, there are always others who use it as an excuse to howl about how badly we are paid, and how it is completely unreasonable to expect any poor oppressed FT to work more than 16 hours per week.

It is true - teaching English is, as professions go, not particularly well paid. That is true anywhere, not just in China. After all, the bar for entry is pretty low - in most jobs you just have to turn up and speak your native language, hardly very rigorous.

If you want to get rich, do something else - I have a friend who is a CCIE (network engineer) and he makes several hundred dollars an hour back in the States.

The obsessing about CTs pay, and the conviction that all of them are making boatloads of money under the table is perhaps symptomatic of the bunker mentality which can affect expats, wherever they are from and wherever in the world they happen to be living. Because for linguistic / cultural / whatever reasons they are isolated from the local society, there is a tendency to develop a kind of gut feeling that there is some vast conspiracy to cheat / put upon / exploit the outsiders, and that all the locals are party to it.

Its true, FTs in China are not particularly valued or well rewarded.

On the other hand, neither are Chinese people, which includes (most) CTs.

[PBirm123]

Great post, bobdaun!

*Applauds*

[Kysorb]

I agree that training school CT's in big cities are generally making 3000-5000 depending on experience and ability.

I have yet to see any big bonuses paid out or even heard of at training schools. Occasionally my school gives away an iPad to one or two of them for high renewal rates of students.

[muffintop]