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Mike from MI
Joined: 26 Aug 2013
Posts: 13
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 Posted: Sun Sep 29, 2013 5:03 pm Post subject: Working at Polish universities |
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| For those with advanced degrees, is a permanent faculty position at a Polish university a realistic or worthwhile goal? What about a temporary position? How does working at a Polish university compare to working at a decently run private language school? Thanks in advance. |
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dragonpiwo
Joined: 04 Mar 2013
Posts: 1650
Location: Berlin
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| Posted: Mon Sep 30, 2013 7:02 am Post subject: uni |
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| At a uni, you get paid 12 months of the year and might get a room in halls. |
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Master Shake
Joined: 03 Nov 2006
Posts: 1202
Location: Colorado, USA
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| Posted: Mon Sep 30, 2013 10:25 pm Post subject: |
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In the 5 years I've lived in Poland, I've only met 1 native speaker teacher who taught at a uni. Maybe they avoid us members of the uninitiated.
I hear the money isn't great, definitely less than what you could make working for yourself or for a well-paying language school.
But you are paid 12 months a year and have health care, vacations, sick days and possibly accommodation, paid.
I'd say you're better off getting your teaching license and teaching in an international K-12 type school. If you aren't allergic to kids. |
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dynow
Joined: 07 Nov 2006
Posts: 1080
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| Posted: Tue Oct 01, 2013 12:36 am Post subject: |
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Oh, I met a good one in Wroclaw that worked in a uni.
He had some weird title at the uni making him sound educated and important, but he was actually just Joe Schmoe American with no prior experience or training whatsoever and did nothing but conversation classes. THAT'S IT. Guy was fresh out of college and just wound up in Wroclaw. They set him up in university housing with all the other students, it was a rat's nest, maybe 25-30 sq. meters, but hey, it was free. Pretty sure he was a one and done guy (fall/spring semester and then back home) but yeah, he "worked in a university." |
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delphian-domine
Joined: 11 Mar 2011
Posts: 674
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| Posted: Tue Oct 01, 2013 7:13 am Post subject: |
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Generally speaking, it's doable - but there are two very different opportunities. You can go in and teach English skills (writing, grammar, etc) - or you can go in as an academic. I've only ever met two three academics in my time here - the rest were simply living year to year as nothing more than language teachers who happened to work for the universities rather than someone else.
Getting a job as a language teacher at one is pretty much dependent on who you know, while the academic path is open to those who are serious about their subject. But to get into the academic part requires you to spend weekends at conferences, to write papers and so on - in other words, it clashes with the "native speaker" lifestyle of obsessing about what pubs are where.
But it's worth pointing out that there are huge amounts of Polish PhD's all fighting for the same jobs - so you really have to be exceptional to land such a job on the academic career path. If you've just got an MA in TESOL and next to no experience, forget about it. |
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dynow
Joined: 07 Nov 2006
Posts: 1080
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| Posted: Tue Oct 01, 2013 1:14 pm Post subject: |
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delphian-domine wrote:
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| But it's worth pointing out that there are huge amounts of Polish PhD's all fighting for the same jobs - so you really have to be exceptional to land such a job on the academic career path. If you've just got an MA in TESOL and next to no experience, forget about it. |
Polish PhD's fighting for it....what does the job pay? I can't help but wonder how lucrative the position is after one spends 10 years in college getting a PhD.... |
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delphian-domine
Joined: 11 Mar 2011
Posts: 674
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| Posted: Tue Oct 01, 2013 7:37 pm Post subject: |
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| dynow wrote: |
| Polish PhD's fighting for it....what does the job pay? I can't help but wonder how lucrative the position is after one spends 10 years in college getting a PhD.... |
Depends what you describe as lucrative. Landing a job on the career track at a university does give you a lot of possibilities - travelling all over the world for conferences (all expenses paid, of course) is normal at a big university, the possibility to use endless amounts of students to do research, the possibility of running a department in a short space of time - the rewards can be very good indeed.
The base salary might not be amazing, but what university job anywhere pays a huge amount? It's a vocation, after all. And at least in Poland, the practice of hiring vast amounts of adjunct professors hasn't caught on. |
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dynow
Joined: 07 Nov 2006
Posts: 1080
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| Posted: Tue Oct 01, 2013 8:57 pm Post subject: |
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delphian-domine wrote:
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Depends what you describe as lucrative. Landing a job on the career track at a university does give you a lot of possibilities - travelling all over the world for conferences (all expenses paid, of course) is normal at a big university, the possibility to use endless amounts of students to do research, the possibility of running a department in a short space of time - the rewards can be very good indeed. |
i can see having more resources available to you within a uni. i'm still wondering about pay.
a PhD usually is a 10+ year commitment and I'd hate to put myself through all that and earn 3,000zl/month. i'm throwing that number out there because the 2 uni profs I used to teach from Wroclaw Uni took home 3K/month, which I think, after 10+ years of school, is a pittance, considering a Pole that studied and spent a few years in England can come back home and work at a language school and earn that much (that sums up half the staff at most large language schools in RP).
as you mentioned, if you're using the uni as a vehicle to later go on and earn 10K/month then hey, everyone needs to make their bones somewhere, but I wonder how many of them go on to make that kind of cabbage. |
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Master Shake
Joined: 03 Nov 2006
Posts: 1202
Location: Colorado, USA
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| Posted: Tue Oct 01, 2013 10:17 pm Post subject: |
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I'm pretty sure anything near 10,000zl/mo. is unheard of for a uni. professor in Poland. Personality, I'd take the 7k/mo. over the prestige of running a department any day of the week.
That's why I think teaching in a well-established international school is a wise move in Poland, or almost any other country, for that matter. Good pay, normal hours, health care, benefits, summer vacations - what more could you want? Only caveat is that you have to teach kids, but I do that anyway.
I know a couple ex-British Council teachers who have gone on to teach at international schools and haven't looked back. |
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delphian-domine
Joined: 11 Mar 2011
Posts: 674
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| Posted: Wed Oct 02, 2013 4:02 pm Post subject: |
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| dynow wrote: |
| as you mentioned, if you're using the uni as a vehicle to later go on and earn 10K/month then hey, everyone needs to make their bones somewhere, but I wonder how many of them go on to make that kind of cabbage. |
Well, this is what I know -
Most people with a serious position in the university (ie, not those stuck teaching languages) tend to use the position for other things. For instance - the workload in terms of teaching time tends to be very low, so you have plenty of time for outside interests. It's very common for professors to have business interests outside of the university, and they will frequently use their position as a professor to help them - after all, it carries significant name value. It doesn't apply in all fields, but certainly those in law, engineering, etc will all have their fingers in pies that they can work on during their real 'work' time.
For that reason, it's pretty pointless looking at base salary - someone might earn 3000zl net as a lecturer at the university, but they certainly won't tell you about their outside interests that they work on during university work time. |
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dynow
Joined: 07 Nov 2006
Posts: 1080
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| Posted: Thu Oct 03, 2013 3:49 pm Post subject: |
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| delphian-domine wrote: |
For that reason, it's pretty pointless looking at base salary - someone might earn 3000zl net as a lecturer at the university, but they certainly won't tell you about their outside interests that they work on during university work time. |
it's "pointless" if you're a professor that is fine with landing a job you worked over a decade to finally get yet still needs to do "work on the side" to make ends meet. the earning potential with work outside of their uni may be a reality but it still means.....you have to work a lot more to make decent money.
if i were to put in over a decade of college level studies, i don't want to have to hustle with other work because I'm grossly underpaid.
here's another perspective: how much extra money are we talkin? 1000zl? 2000zl? 5000zl? there are plenty of TEFL'ers on this forum that claim to make up 10,000zl/month or more and they didn't spend a day in a graduate level and certainly not a doctorate level college program.
Imagine a 25-26 year old TEFL'er with a few years' experience bringing home 5,000zl more a month than a 32 year old PhD that just slaved through over 10 years of uni. |
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wojbrian
Joined: 13 Aug 2009
Posts: 178
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| Posted: Thu Oct 03, 2013 5:11 pm Post subject: |
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| That is very common. |
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delphian-domine
Joined: 11 Mar 2011
Posts: 674
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| Posted: Sun Oct 06, 2013 4:11 pm Post subject: |
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| dynow wrote: |
| it's "pointless" if you're a professor that is fine with landing a job you worked over a decade to finally get yet still needs to do "work on the side" to make ends meet. the earning potential with work outside of their uni may be a reality but it still means.....you have to work a lot more to make decent money. |
But you're missing the point - those professors aren't doing extra work, they're doing it when they're supposed to be working on university stuff. I've never met a professor yet that looked tired - their workload simply isn't very high in the Polish system. Hence why they can and do have significant external things - because they can.
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| if i were to put in over a decade of college level studies, i don't want to have to hustle with other work because I'm grossly underpaid. |
There's not much hustling involved - once you're into a major university, you're pretty much set as long as you keep publishing and attending conferences. People don't get fired from universities for incompetence, after all.
| Quote: |
| here's another perspective: how much extra money are we talkin? 1000zl? 2000zl? 5000zl? there are plenty of TEFL'ers on this forum that claim to make up 10,000zl/month or more and they didn't spend a day in a graduate level and certainly not a doctorate level college program. |
Extra money is all what you're capable of. For instance, those universities that have mandatory drawing exams before entry such as the art colleges - the professors there often earn significant amounts of money by teaching drawing to students in their part time - of course, they then judge the students portfolios when it comes to entry. Such abuse is rife.
It's impossible to put numbers on it because it depends what you do. I know one example where a professor will teach students privately for 200zl an hour - only during the day, only Monday-Friday. He teaches a difficult subject to those who study in English, and it's well known that if you can't obtain a passing grade fairly, his private lessons are a good alternative.
He should - according to his contract - be working at that time. He simply claims that he is conducting individual tutorials - which are perfectly allowed - the fact that he's earning a significant amount of extra cash by simply doing these classes during his own contracted work time is neither here nor there in the university mindset.
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| Imagine a 25-26 year old TEFL'er with a few years' experience bringing home 5,000zl more a month than a 32 year old PhD that just slaved through over 10 years of uni. |
Where are you getting the 10 years figure from? In Poland, it's 8 years, much of which isn't slavery. |
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Mike from MI
Joined: 26 Aug 2013
Posts: 13
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| Posted: Sun Oct 06, 2013 8:54 pm Post subject: |
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| Thanks for your answers. Do temporary instructors get free tuition if they want to get a degree? I see that some Polish universities offer graduate programs in which English is the language of instruction. Do Polish universities have assistantships like American universities do? |
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Master Shake
Joined: 03 Nov 2006
Posts: 1202
Location: Colorado, USA
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| Posted: Sun Oct 06, 2013 9:31 pm Post subject: |
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| dynow wrote: |
| there are plenty of TEFL'ers on this forum that claim to make up 10,000zl/month or more and they didn't spend a day in a graduate level and certainly not a doctorate level college program. |
Not true. Some of the higher-earning tefl'ers have masters degrees (I know several). Don't forget about DELTA which is also post-graduate qualification.
| dynow wrote: |
| Imagine a 25-26 year old TEFL'er with a few years' experience bringing home 5,000zl more a month than a 32 year old PhD that just slaved through over 10 years of uni. |
I think this speaks to the quality of higher education in Poland compared to the USA, the UK & Australia - i.e. it isn't that consistently high in Poland yet. In many universities anyone who puts in the bare min. can pass.
The rift between native tefl'er pay and local professor pay is is in no way unique to Poland. In Thailand Thai professors made a fraction of what we tefl'ers did.
At a glance, it seems unfair, but then again it's pretty much forbidden to fail anyone in Thailand. Who knows if someone with a 'masters' in a subject knows their a$$ from a hole in the ground? I wouldn't put much stock in any degree from a random uni. in SE Asia. |
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