Job Discussion Forums

[CardsFan]

I joined up so I could ask everyone a question. I'm sure there will be some of you who do not agree with my idea at all but here goes anyway. I am originally from North Carolina, came to Japan about 10 years ago and I am presently working in a very good job at a private high school. There are no employment problems for me and I am not looking to change my job any time soon. I graduated from a small private college in North Carolina with a major in business and minor in English. I then graduated from the graduate school with a Masters in psych. Jobs were scarce when I graduated and I was contacted about taking a job in Japan. This was very interesting to me and the pay was good so I got a teaching certificate, and headed over here on my own. I planned to go back to the States in a year or two but I absolutely loved it here in Japan and the teaching profession as well so I decided to make a career of it. I studied my head off in Japanese and got my Japanese Language Proficiency Level One Certificate. Everything's fine so far.
A few years ago, my school started hiring teachers from Ivy League schools. Name schools with big reputations. School names most Japanese are familiar with. This sort of thing is very important to Japanese, unfortunately. It never was that big a deal to me before I came here. However, I started thinking about what I should do. It's a bit frustrating because I have the qualfications, the language, the experience, the job, and I'm instructing and helping these guys from Ivy in their jobs. I'm fine with that, the guys are great and they don't ram their universities down your throat every time you talk to them.
Chalk it up as my own personal mid-life crisis, but I am wanting some qualifications of my own. Some qualifications that make Japanese ears perk up. Since distance education has really caught on in the past few years, I decided to look into it. There are quite a few programs out there but I have to chose what I really want to do. I already have the job, the qualifications and the experience. I'm just wanting something that will not take up too much of my time since my job is so busy.
I realize it sounds like I'm looking for a short cut. It's the only option I have right now. I have found some schools with an important sounding name, but some are diploma mills, others you have to work for it, and others take your life experience to account for some of the work. I've looked into some of these universities and some are accredited while others are not. Accredidation is not important to me. I already have degrees with that. Something that doesn't cost too much, doesn't take up too much of my time, and will boost up my credentials a bit.
I am proud of what I've accomplished so far in Japan and happy to be where I am. Sometimes you can think about something in so many different ways that you don't know which end is up after a while. It would be very interesting to hear what others have to say about this. Maybe only those who have been here for a few years can relate to this but there it is. This has become a really long post so I'll end it. Thanks for reading.

CardsFan

[JimDunlop2]

I really hate to respond with an answer like: "don't bother" but that's about the only answer I can give without knowing fully your motivations for this.

If you are looking to further your own education and pro-D then that's fine. Otherwise, whether you are Ivy League or not, it won't make a lick o' difference when it comes to job security and getting replaced by scab labour from a dispatch pimp. In fact, I'd say many genuine Ivy League grads probably don't end up coming to Japan for the simple reason that they get snapped up by decent, well-paying employers in the U.S. shortly after (or even before) graduation. So unless their motivation is purely interest in living in an Asian country for some time (for personal reasons) I can't see them exactly lining up to come here.

I would recommend you head over to this thread: http://www.eslcafe.com/forums/job/viewtopic.php?t=25114 and read about what has happened to one university prof, as well as some of the links I posted about academic apartheid.

If having an Ivy-League piece of paper is your main concern then that's up to you but otherwise I would say that if you want to "pad" your CV with some more qualifications, start by joining some professional associations (JALT may be a good one) and get some peer-reviewed journal articles published. There are more ways than one to approach the problem.

[PAULH]

[CardsFan]

I'm not thinking about this to increase my job security. There's really no way to do that is there? When that happens, it happens. I'm just trying to improve my CV a bit. It's not that I want to go head to toe against the ivy leaguers (they're on some study exxhange program), but to be able to have a name school in my resume is what I hope to accomplish.

[CardsFan]

Can any of them actually teach and is there any chance of job advancement in your company.

These guys I work with are all great and have training in what they are doing. But they are only here for a short-time.

From my experience, teaching in japan is a great leveller and having a degree from Stanford or Yale really makes no scrap of difference in the classroom.

I know it doesn't matter where your degree is from in the classroom. I've seen lousy teachers with great CVs and really really good teachers who only had a bachelors in something unrelated to ESL.

there are great teachers with less stellar pedigrees than those guys with Ivy league (which is an American concept anyway, you forget about other countries such as the UK and Australia who dont place such an emphasis on brand)

I believe Japan puts emphasis on brand. Never thought much about it until I came here.


Accreditation is not important to you but it will be to a university if you wnat to do a PhD and they dont recognise your qualifications, or your university you apply to doesnt recognise the university you 'graduated' from.

I'm not thinking of moving on to a phd but if I did, I have a masters from my regionally accredited school in the States so thats not a problem.


I never worry about what other people have but only what I need to get ahead here.

That's exactly what I'm doing. I'm trying to figure out what I need to get ahead here without doing something that is costly and time-consuming. Or maybe there is no such thing. Oh well.....gonna keep looking though.

CardsFan

[PAULH]

[PAULH]

[PAULH]

Here is a list of institutiond from the US and elsewhere that offer degrees by distance. Personally I would not go near diploma mills but whatever rocks your boat.

http://www.teaching-english-in-japan.net/directory/cat/17

Best degrees here for "getting ahead" are the Masters in education and D.ED from Temple (about 600 M.Ed graduates in Japan) and Columbia University in Tokyo,

Shenandoah MSC in TESOL, University of Indiana, Masters in Languages acquisition)

UK degrees are good too but you will pay more as an international student.

[CardsFan]

PaulH wrote:

So one school in Japan has an exchange program with a fancy university in the United States that sends people over on a student work/exchange program. Its obviously important to your employers not to Japan in general.

I don't agree. I think Japanese consider that because of their own educational system.


Quote:
It never was that big a deal to me before I came here. However, I started thinking about what I should do. It's a bit frustrating because I have the qualfications, the language, the experience, the job, and I'm instructing and helping these guys from Ivy in their jobs. I'm fine with that, the guys are great and they don't ram their universities down your throat every time you talk to them. Chalk it up as my own personal mid-life crisis, but I am wanting some qualifications of my own. Some qualifications that make Japanese ears perk up.



Im confused

I think I explained it pretty clearly. And I don't agree that they couldn't tell where a degree came from. Not everyone can but my employers do. You say most employers don't care where their teachers came from. True, but as long as they have the look and speak English, that's all they want. Fly-by-night eikaiwa schools or the JET program probably don't care.


Excuse me for being cynical a bit here.

No need to be. I don't know why you are.

What are you on a one year contract? renewed every year until such a time they get sick of you and you are out the door? Im on my second full time contract at a university and am sick of changing jobs every two years to 'make their ears perk up'. Start treating me like a teaching professional rather than a temporary hired hand to grace their classrooms for a year or two and I might worry about what my employers think a little more seriously. In the meantime I do whats best for me, not to impress anyone.

No, I'm not on a one-year contract. I have tenure. I didn't want to change jobs every few years either so I searched and found a job that would give me the job security I wanted.
I'm thinking about what's best for me too, and this is one of the things that I feel would help me. It's not something I absolutely have to do, but it's something I want to do.

Start treating me like a teaching professional rather than a temporary hired hand to grace their classrooms for a year or two and I might worry about what my employers think a little more seriously.

You sound bitter. I don't know why you're telling me this.

[PAULH]

CardsFan


you say you have tenure, which I assume means you are teaching at a university and my guess is you have a PhD and teach about 6 classes a week.

I am full time at my university, on a term contract and with part time teach about 13 classes a week


You say you are so busy that you dont have time to get a degree. i really dont see what you are complaining about.

[moot point]

Interesting conversation here, but PaulH you seem to be confused about Cards background and current situation, and have subsequently made miscalculated assumptions.

He wrote:

[PAULH]

OK so obviously having tenure at a high school is not the same thing as having tenure at a university.

To my knowledge and according to Debito's green list there are about 20 universities out of about 770 in Japan that offer unlimited tenure to foreign nationals with no term limits. I am a full time contracted teacher at my university and "tenured" as I understood means university teachers.

Tenure at a high school means that you are obviously qualified in their mind as a full time and valued member of staff.

Glenski will have a better idea than I do of what high school teachers do, as he is full time at a high school in Hokkaido.

[CardsFan]

Ok, thanks for your advice. I hope you can find what you need too.

[Crab]

In my past experience as a contracted lecturer at a Japanese university, I have to say that I have seen time and again the importance that is placed on where one's qualifications were acquired, often to the detriment of the quality of classes.

My colleagues had degrees from Oxford, Cambridge, Monterrey, London School of Economics, McGill, University of Toronto, Sorbonne, Yonsei, and Melbourne to name a few. I am convinced that part of the reason I got my job was because of the "status" of the university from where I got my undergraduate degree.

Certainly, my experience at this particular Japanese university was that one's alma mater did count for something.

It only makes sense that this be the case as the Japanese border near obsession with their tendency to rank almost everything. There is also a clear ranking of Japanese universities with names like Waseda, Keio and Tokyo being at the top. It is certainly no secret that graduates from these universities often get the best, and most prestigious jobs and have an easier time getting promoted up the ladder.

It should be no surprise then, that graduates from acclaimed overseas universities would also get favourable treatment when searching for jobs in Japan.

So, in my opinion, if you wish to have the best chance at building a long-term, permanent career teaching in Japan, a degree from a "name" university will certainly not hurt you. It will, in some cases, give you a definite advantage over the competition.

Anyway, just my 2 cents.

[moot point]

But Crab, your 2 cents, are worth more than a million in compared to the previous comments on this thread. I competely concur with you there.