Job Discussion Forums

[eigo]

Hello to everyone out there. If anyone out there is working in China with a work permit but without a degree I'd be interested in you sharing your story on the issue.
What steps did you take to gaining employment and your work permit?
Were you satisfied with the approach that you took or would you do it differently if you were going to do it again?
What limitations did you find with working in a country where the "legal" requirement is to have a degree?
Were there any provinces where you found it difficult to get work?
Anyone who wants to share their previous experiences feel free to write them down.

[Calories]

I know people on this board say that a degree is a legal requirement but, in my experiance it's not true. China is a large enough country that believing what anyone says about it as 100% true is not going to get you very far. A lot of people on and offline say things about China that turn out to be false. I had no problem getting a residence permit and foreign experts cert. My school did all the work. I came in on a L visa though simply because I procrastinated getting a Canadian passport for so long that I didn't have one until 3 or 4 days before my flight left. The L visa wasn't a problem. Finding a job was easy because I used the Oxford Seminars job placement service. I'm in Jiangsu and have only met/heard of one teacher who has a degree. Most foreigners I know of have TEFL certificates and not much else. I think a lot of people are doing what I'm doing and that is taking a break from university so their degrees are half finished or less.

[tw]

[Leon Purvis]

[foreignDevil]

[Mydnight]

Not a single employer that I've met in China has asked to see my UNI diplomia; not a single one.

I've been here more than 2 years.

[WordUp]

Sure you may be able to get work without a degree.. but more and more frequently schools seem to be forging diplomas without teachers knowledge or consent just in order to obtain the proper working documents to acquire the residence permissions.

The future for non-diploma individuals working in "developed" China is bleak and there will be less "grandfathering" into the system for those who have been here for several years. I suspect that the lesser developed provinces will foster the approach that other provinces have in the past for accelerating their development.

Already this is happening in Zhejiang, Hunan and several other provinces. Can non diploma folks find work? Yeah. Does your schools relationships make a difference? Yeah. Are there fines for schools who hire unqualified teachers? You bet! They are high and they are being enforced more than ever these days. Eventually, schools will not want to endure the risk of these fines and eventually in the interest of quality, they will adhere to a greater employment standard, which - if you have been working in China should already know, applies to every Chinese person seeking work.. especially as a teacher..

Has anyone noticed that the typical wage for Chinese English language teachers has risen dramatically in the past three years?

Some of these Chinese teachers salaries are well on par with their foreign teacher colleagues.





Best bet is to finish your degree..

[foreignDevil]

sorry.. I reread my last post, and I feel it may have been a little too polite, and maybe ambiguous. Now I am asking the OP directly(and anyone else who may have similar questions): just what is it you think you have to offer a classroom of students, without a degree? you didn't mention anything else like actual experience in a classroom.

foreignDevil.

[tw]

[The Voice Of Reason]

[eigo]

[7969]

altho i have two degrees and worked hard to get both of them, foreign devil is indeed misled if he thinks the degree makes the teacher. some of the worst teachers i've seen in asia had degrees. some of the best had nothing past high school

my last school in henan did indeed ask to see my degree, they asked to hold onto it so as to make a copy, i handed it over, the FAO promptly folded it into a little postage stamp size and stuffed it into her purse. i guess i neglected to mention to her that that piece of paper cost about $20,000 LOL

7969

[cartago]

At the moment a degree is not needed in Heilongjiang, I suppose the extreme cold makes it less attractive to many teachers, although I think it's a perfectly fine place to live.

I'm sure the OP has considered the pros and cons of continuing with education so it's really no one else's business to tell him/her to get a degree.

Most of the FTs I've met have a degree but in a subject unrelated to teaching English. They're qualified to teach in China but is someone with a degree in marketing better qualified to teach compared to someone who doesn't have a degree but has teaching experience. Or consider someone with a degree in English but who doesn't have any teaching qualifications and has never taught. Or someone who is an experienced teacher but taught PE or math.

If someone has absolutely no credentials than that person probably shouldn't be teaching but for most of us we have something, maybe teaching experience, maybe a degree but no experience, etc. Sure it's much better to get a degree in the long run but people who insist that someone without a degree is an unqualified teacher are just snobs.

[cj750]

[cj750]