Job Discussion Forums

[Evan2009]

Well?

[Mia Xanthi]

Yes, I do.

1. PMU did treat me fairly at the end of my contract, although the hoops I had to jump through to get that fair treatment left a bitter taste in my mouth.

2. My colleagues and my students at the women's campus were wonderful. I miss them every day and I wish the university would have made it easier for us to stay together. However, when the new teachers with lesser qualifications were being paid more than older teachers were being offered to renew, it was impossible to justify staying.

Also, after a while, it became difficult to face those wonderful students and tell them again that the books they had pre-paid for still hadn't arrived, the copier wasn't working, the plumbing and AC were out. They paid a lot of money for things they didn't always get.

3. I was fortunate enough to have immediate supervisors who were professional, kind, and competent. They were extraordinarily supportive in difficult circumstances, and I admire them. They provided a buffer zone between us and the vicissitudes of the upper level administration.

4. PMU is nicely situated close to the Bahrain border!

[desultude]

PMU is over there, and I am not. That is the best thing about it at the moment.

I second the fact that the students and fellow faculty were great. We had some good times with each other, so long as the edicts weren't flying from the men's side and the physical plant wasn't continually non-functioning.

We will all miss each other, and hopefully will find each other at conferences and at better work-places.

If you have thick skin or are good at kissing A#$, you can survive a year or so there. Even the most "adaptable" are stressed by the end of the second year. Some of the men just seem to check out mentally and emotionally and hang in there okay- it takes good compartmentalization skills, though. A lot of men with wives end up alone after not too long- if they are lucky, the wives come to visit every year or so.

If a person really needs the first teaching abroad experience and thinks they are up to the challenge, they may want to take a chance there.

[Bob Gorn]

Please be careful about accepting any position with PMU. They tend not to plan well, and you can be offered a job and then have that offer rescinded at the last moment,.


Do not listen to recruiters when they tell you that your bosses will be Americans. There are westerners in some middle mangement positions but the only real power is in Saudi hands. In the hands of only two Saudi men, actually. The westerners just filter those decisions.

In the last two years, people have had large sums of money deducted for "electric bills" that had already been paid. Teachers are required to have a doctor's letter for ONE DAY of absence. You can wait months for a visa, usually with no bank account or a frozen bank account....and PMU admin do not care if you're kids don't have food or you can't pay for your mortguage back home. Then when you have to go to Bahrian to get the visa finally issued, PMU will make you pay for the huge food costs at the hotel, and sometimes even make you pay for the hotel itself.

There are alot of good people working at PMU, but the admin will pinch every penny until there are no more pennies to pinch. Where did all those pennies go anyway?

[Citizenkane]

[desultude]

There is plenty of money to have big inaugural events and to pay the Saudi admin quite quite well. On the other hand, there is not enough for copy machines, books or lightbulbs.

Even the middle level western has questionable academic experience. One has advanced internet business degrees- and he is in charge of an academic program.

They, after a couple of years, expected to be turning a profit. The charge the highest tuition in SA (according to my students). The students last year had to cough up 10,000 Riyals for books and technology in advance of the semesters- many never got their books at all, and the technology is problematic at best.

The place is a cash sink-hole, and huge amounts are reportedly unaccounted for. By the middle of the last academic year they finally started paying faculty more or less on time. The Philippinos have not been so lucky, and are often paid quite late.

Can the place get it together? I don't believe there is any interest in doing so. Everyone in the admin has their own game and agenda, and it seems the university is down on the list of priorities. In fact, the latest story I heard was that PMU was mainly built to raise property values and develop Half Moon Bay. Who knows? As there is no transparency, there are only stories and rumors, and no accountability. I actually think the admin is smart enough to know that if there was a sincere interest in developing a good academic institution, they would need to be seeking external professional management composed of academic leaders.

[spotz]

[Raju]

Saudi Arabia can be exasperating at times. Many persevere for a contract or two because of the obvious financial benefits and comfortable lifestyle, others get used to the Saudi way of seeing and doing things and stay for many years. Many just cannot adapt and many are clearly incapable of gratitude.

It takes a generation or two for a university to rise from the dunes and function well. PMU is a new, private university and has not yet been in existence long enough to produce any graduates. The university continues to expand and reasonable people will understand that a large number of managers and faculty are working hard to establish practices and procedures and produce a workable curriculum.

At PMU, much of the twaddle has been circulated by the 'I loathe myself, I loathe PMU' group. Feeding each other's misery and resentment, the assorted collection of grizzlers and whimpers are/were inexperienced in the region and incapable of adaptation and largely made up of the lonely, bored and unhappy individuals that should never have come to KSA in the first place. I have worked in several institutions of higher education in the Middle East and assure readers to this forum that PMU is a good place to work for me.

Raju
[/b]

[Mia Xanthi]

[desultude]

[isabel]

I am wondering if anyone can refute any of the charges that have made on this board about specific actions and situations at Prince Mohammad U.?

I see name calling rom Raju, and upset on both sides, but I have only seen fairly negative posts about the place.

Can someone say anything in defense of that place other than the fact that it is a new university having growing pains? That is not a good enough excuse for some of the inhumane treatment and bad behavior on the part of the administration that I have reading about and hearing.

[desultude]

[isabel]

[floja]

Raju!

I am really shocked!

How could you say those things to people you worked with? I can't think even who you are. No one I knew felt that way about the teachers there.

I liked the dinners at Holliday inn, but they became lunches.

Those were swell little tin wall thingies they gave us for our two years of service.

I liked that we were safe from the men because we were kept from their campus and the admin buildings.

Not having books made it easy to make up lessons and not have to do the same work as other people.

That gave us lots of free time to chat and drink tea. Oh, but we had to bring tea. We wanted tea boys like the guys have, but no go.

And if I wore my abaya, I didn't even have to get dressed in the AM.

[Charybdis]

I agree with Mia Xanthi that my female colleagues and students at PMU were super. That's really I could ever say that was good about it. Overall PMU was a dreadful experience, and I've lived in several different countries and had plenty of difficult jobs. I have never been so glad to leave anywhere. Those of us leaving aren't whiners--Raju, and administrator, is quite wrong about that. All of us had significant teaching experience in foreign countries and many in the Middle East. Desultude and Mia Xanthi are right: the number of faculty leaving this year (not renewing) speaks volumes about how we were treated by the adminstration, including a couple of high-ranking Westerners.

Ironically, the job was only tolerable because the women's campus was so segregated. Every day was filled, however, with new administrative horrors and edicts that made life unbearable and teaching nearly impossible. The administration does, indeed, pinch pennies at every turn, and it got worse as time went on. My prediction is that the financial pressure will continue and adversely affect not only the teaching but also the housing situation even more dramatically in the upcoming year(s).

We never had access to the top Saudi administrators. In two years I saw the Rector twice (30-45 minutes late each time), and the Vice Rector twice. On a daily basis our female supervisors had no power or authority, and every head of the women's campus (3 that I know of in 2 1/2 years) was kicked out or resigned. Still the Dean (a Westerner of questionable racial and gender sensibilities) insisted that there was no inequality at PMU. The fact that we were literally locked in ostensibly to protect us and the students was simply glossed over (you know how scary those marrauding camel riders can be). Equipment and software, including the millions of riyals invested in technology, never functioned properly and rarely was updated. Repairs could only be made in the evening or on weekends, and required the personal signature of the Rector. Although the men had "tea boys" to serve them, women didn't even have tea. We frequently ran out of toilet and copy paper. The male campus has over 20 techies and the female campus has 3---one of whom only does training and one of whom mainly handles student concerns. And these were just the little concerns.

Bigger concerns included overall complete disdain for faculty members' and their dependents health, safety and welfare. A residents' committee on the compound was disbanded two years ago when people complained, and unhealthy situations with the pool, water supply, and faulty construction were simply not dealt with. Security was non-existent, and often downright scary. One faculty member who gave notice found out that his visa had been cancelled when he reached the Bahrain border. He returned, and paid a $6,500 US "fine" for not giving enough notice. As you can imagine, this caused others to simply pull runners, which, in turn, created beaucratic nightmares for those of us who finished our contracts.