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ls650
Joined: 10 May 2003
Posts: 3484
Location: British Columbia
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 Posted: Sat Jul 29, 2006 1:18 am Post subject: |
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| When I was in Indonesia two years ago, one did not need a degree. |
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rusmeister
Joined: 15 Jun 2006
Posts: 867
Location: Russia
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| Posted: Sat Jul 29, 2006 2:10 am Post subject: |
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And in Russia it's changing. 12 years ago, simply speaking native English got you in the door. 5 years ago a B.A. was still sufficient but now most employers insist on one of the dinky little certificates as well, and the bigger players put teachers through a summer cert course themselves.
If you go into business for yourself, of course it doesn't matter. All you have to do is convince your clients you're worth it. |
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Chris_Crossley
Joined: 26 Jun 2004
Posts: 1797
Location: Still in the centre of Furnace City, PRC, after eight years!!!
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| Posted: Sat Jul 29, 2006 2:59 am Post subject: Setting up business is OK - if you're single, that is ... |
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| rusmeister wrote: |
| If you go into business for yourself, of course it doesn't matter. All you have to do is convince your clients you're worth it. |
Provided, of course, that, ideally, you either have no family ties or else have a reserve of funds to see you through what could, theoretically, be very lean times.
In my case, I have a spouse who is working and one pre-school daughter who will go to kindergarten this autumn. Having a steady job with a good salary (and a mortgage, which we do have, by the way) is the way to go for us at the present time.
Once the mortgage is paid off, we could risk re-mortgaging the apartment in order to finance the establishment of a school of our own - if we so choose. (Or play safe and re-mortgage it in order to buy a second apartment and then rent it out to college students ... or my parents-in-law ...  Money!)
As for the topic of countries that are not dead set on accepting foreign teachers with degrees, yes, this situation is changing. In China, it certainly is, even if, in the almost 5 years that I have been in the country, I have worked with people who have no TEFL/TESOL qualifications or even a degree of any kind.
I think that what countries' governments are doing is that they want to avoid just giving carte blanche to native speakers coming into teach their own language just because they are native speakers per se. I am sure that many TEFLers have encountered the odd drifter or two who have, in essence, fled their own countries for the outside world because they are deemed to be useless back home and delude themselves into believing that they can somehow delude the local population into believing that they can gain some "respectability" from simply being foreigners.
If they can't teach, though, they are usually shown the door, in which case they can drift in the foreign land just as easily as when they used to drift in their own homeland, except that some school is likely to take them on until they find out just how useless they really are.
Hence, governments believe that one is less likely to be a useless drifter if one has a college degree. I say "less likely", notice - not "unlikely". I am sure that there are drifters with degrees bumming around somewhere ... |
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khmerhit
Joined: 31 May 2003
Posts: 1874
Location: Reverse Culture Shock Unit
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| Posted: Sat Jul 29, 2006 6:10 pm Post subject: |
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I worked in Cambodia without a degree for three years plus. A number of my colleagues also lacked degrees. This is changing, but it aint changing that fast.
Illiteracy rates in North America hover around the 17 percent mark, give or take your definition of the term. Imagine how high they are in the rest of the world. Do you think most schools give a shit whether you have a degree or not, so long as you are presentable, punctual, relatively sober and willing to commit enough time that the word will get out and about, and the ss will come to learn from the native speaker?
Having said that... I agree, smell the degree!! |
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rusmeister
Joined: 15 Jun 2006
Posts: 867
Location: Russia
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| Posted: Sun Jul 30, 2006 9:05 am Post subject: Re: Setting up business is OK - if you're single, that is .. |
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| Chris_Crossley wrote: |
| rusmeister wrote: |
| If you go into business for yourself, of course it doesn't matter. All you have to do is convince your clients you're worth it. |
Provided, of course, that, ideally, you either have no family ties or else have a reserve of funds to see you through what could, theoretically, be very lean times.
In my case, I have a spouse who is working and one pre-school daughter who will go to kindergarten this autumn. Having a steady job with a good salary (and a mortgage, which we do have, by the way) is the way to go for us at the present time.
Once the mortgage is paid off, we could risk re-mortgaging the apartment in order to finance the establishment of a school of our own - if we so choose. (Or play safe and re-mortgage it in order to buy a second apartment and then rent it out to college students ... or my parents-in-law ... Money!)
As for the topic of countries that are not dead set on accepting foreign teachers with degrees, yes, this situation is changing. In China, it certainly is, even if, in the almost 5 years that I have been in the country, I have worked with people who have no TEFL/TESOL qualifications or even a degree of any kind.
I think that what countries' governments are doing is that they want to avoid just giving carte blanche to native speakers coming into teach their own language just because they are native speakers per se. I am sure that many TEFLers have encountered the odd drifter or two who have, in essence, fled their own countries for the outside world because they are deemed to be useless back home and delude themselves into believing that they can somehow delude the local population into believing that they can gain some "respectability" from simply being foreigners.
If they can't teach, though, they are usually shown the door, in which case they can drift in the foreign land just as easily as when they used to drift in their own homeland, except that some school is likely to take them on until they find out just how useless they really are.
Hence, governments believe that one is less likely to be a useless drifter if one has a college degree. I say "less likely", notice - not "unlikely". I am sure that there are drifters with degrees bumming around somewhere ... |
Very true about the drifters. But here, they are pretty much all in Moscow or St. Petersburg, because they couldn't get that stream of job offers anywhere else, and couldn't build up a clientele and work independently.
As to mortgages, Americans and most Westerners live in societies where housing is so expensive because things like mortgages make it possible for them to be so, just as insurance ensures that medical prices can rise and rise, until they hit a new ceiling, necessitating a new wrinkle in the insurance industry. (You could sell, take your equity and move to a place where you would OWN your property and not be a slave to the bank, but it would require significant sacrifice of comfort.)
I have both family (3 kids!) and no cash pillow and am in for myself, so that provision is by no means necessarily true. We sold our junky, dinky apartment in Moscow and bought (outright) a nice one in the region. Since then, the price of apartments has close to doubled here. Right now things are very tight, but by October they should be righted again. |
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