Job Discussion Forums

drprc80 · Joined: 06 Feb 2014 Posts: 6

Hi everyone, have received an offer from this university and would like to know if anyone has worked there previously, or if anyone in the nagoya-nisshin area can chat about life there. Have never lived in Japan before and know no Japanese, but have lived in Korea for 6+ years so I imagine things are similar?

So far they all seem very nice and they have a lot of foreign staff, although I'm told the students are at a very low level.

drprc80 · Joined: 06 Feb 2014 Posts: 6

would also be going with a (Korean) wife and two kids aged 0 and 2, so advice on family life would be good also.

mitsui · Joined: 10 Jun 2007 Posts: 1562 Location: Kawasaki

It does not have a good reputation but it is a university job and the experience is beneficial.

Nagoya is not like Korea.
Drivers are the worst in Japan.
Their subway is good, and it is a big city but not as big as Tokyo or
Yokohama.

Depends how long you stay but there could be Korean schools there,
although they are either for North or South Koreans.
Otherwise kids would have to go to public Japanese schools, for pre-school or kindergarten.
Day care centers may have waiting lists.

drprc80 · Joined: 06 Feb 2014 Posts: 6

Many thanks for your reply. Couple of points then:

Are there are English kindergartens in the area?

Surely Japanese drivers can't be any worse than Korean drivers? Smile

I have offers from a Korean uni and this Japanese one. While the Korean one has a higher reputation (top ten), this NUCB job is paying crazy money (above 8 million yen per year). All my experience so far has been in Korea (6+ years) and the UK (4 years), so moving to Japan would be a clean break (no japanese language ability, totally new to the environment). In your honest opinion, do you think it would be worth making the move to Japan? I suppose I am looking for an answer from someone who has lived/worked in both countries....

mitsui · Joined: 10 Jun 2007 Posts: 1562 Location: Kawasaki

I assume it is a limited contract so if you do not mind that,
then take it.

Schools let in students who might have been rejected in the past.
Get used to teaching low level, unmotivated students.

Solar Strength · Joined: 12 Jul 2005 Posts: 557 Location: Bangkok, Thailand

It's a terrible school. Bad management and horrendous students. Look at the hensatchi rankings, and the school is around 35. That's nearly retarded. They will be firing on basic to less-than-basic cognitive abilities. Its' a really low level, bad private university.

The owner is Mr. Kurimoto. He and his brother and son run the business. They also have a women's high school on the property.

Bare in mind, you will be working at a rural campus that is in the middle of the jungle. You won't even be able to drink the water once on campus, which is extremely isolated - check Google Maps. Buses do not run frequently from the train station.

In sum, the students are dumb and the Kurimoto regime do not respect or value their teachers. Turn over of teachers is extremely high at this school. Thus, you will often see advertisements for positions constantly at this school. Nearly everyone who is working there is looking for a new job once they figure out how bad it is there.

You're insane to move a family to Japan for this kind of job. It's one of the worst universities you could work for in Japan.

There is a reason why they are hiring teachers from Korea - no one in Japan of sane mind and who knows anything about teaching at universities in Japan would even apply for a job at Meishodai. I can report that none of the people I know working at universities in Japan would ever even apply for work at NUCB. It's well known throughout the ex-pat university teaching community in Japan that NUCB is a bad school.

mitsui · Joined: 10 Jun 2007 Posts: 1562 Location: Kawasaki

It is also on Debito`s Blacklist.

drprc80 · Joined: 06 Feb 2014 Posts: 6

thanks for the comments. Doesn't sound so good. Will try talking to some of the teachers there for their comments, to see if things have improved since the uni was blacklisted (the blacklist only lists two job posting from 1998 and 2001 as evidence' of hiring younger employees, which while bad is a) old and b) not relevant to my situation). They were keen to stress at the interview that the quality of the students was very low and so I am under no illusions about that. Will keep digging before signing anything though...

rtm · Joined: 13 Apr 2007 Posts: 1003 Location: US

drprc80 · Joined: 06 Feb 2014 Posts: 6

The contract is fixed term (3 years) and I have no desire to stay in Japan beyond that as I have to get my oldest into UK school by age 5-6. I will also be getting a car because of the children. For the money, I haven't seen deals like this in a while, hence my interest in the position. I just hope there isn't any funny business like withholding/changing pay, changing contract etc, like what can regularly happen in Korea. All good advice from people so far though, and have skype meetings with current staff lined up.

Solar Strength · Joined: 12 Jul 2005 Posts: 557 Location: Bangkok, Thailand

drprc80 · Joined: 06 Feb 2014 Posts: 6

Thanks. While this is the first offer I have received, it is not the last job I have applied to, so I am still undecided either way. Just trying to do some due diligence. I have been very impressed though with the guy I have been dealing with, and he has been upfront about the situation with the school and about why I was made this offer - refreshing considering the 5+ month paper trail I've had recently with a notable Korean uni whose administration rejected my application because they couldn't wait just 15 days for the result of my ph.d for a job that doesn't even start until September....Got fed up with the Korean way of doing things and so dealing with NUCB so far has been like a breath of fresh air - all details covered, all questions answered by them so far. Still got time before I have to decide though....

Solar Strength · Joined: 12 Jul 2005 Posts: 557 Location: Bangkok, Thailand

rtm · Joined: 13 Apr 2007 Posts: 1003 Location: US

Big_H · Joined: 21 Dec 2013 Posts: 115

I'm curious as to how people are predicting the students' level to be that low because I've searched for hensachi ranking and it hasn't shown any lists (at least in English). Though online rankings list that university around the 300s zone, out of 800 overall -if we took that as a general reference-.

To put myself in OP's position and to get an abstract image, I've compared NUCB's overall ranking to my own university; and it ranked a couple of hundred colleges above mine. So hearing that NUCB's students are THAT bad doesn't add up especially that our undergrad CS team in my university has been winning consistently in RoboCup* these last couple of years, beating even some of Japan's finer universities occasionally; and overall our students here aren't exactly at community college level (so the CS team isn't the odd case of overachievers).

So to bring this back to topic, how can OP know from a reliable source the level of the students that are waiting for him?
All in all, I realize that they're still undergrads i.e. they have a good chance of being better behaving than middle or high-school students roleplaying as kancho assassins

*RoboCup is a robotics competition held between university undergraduate teams from around the world where their robots/humanoids compete against each other in different tasks; real or virtual (ex: soccer matches, rescue missions etc.).