Job Discussion Forums

[pdsqzy]

As far as I'm concerned, the students involved in the riots at shengda were unreasonable in their expectations. Then definitely wanted something they didn't earn (a diploma from a school they didn't attend). They felt their money entitled them to the prestige of the well-know university. No doubt, Shengda tried to capitalize (thru higher tuitions) on the use of Zhengzhou's reputation and got caught. So, it appears to me both the students and Shengda have a share of the blame. As for tuition, it did not come down. In 2007 it was about RMB10000/year but the next semester it was raised to RMB12000/year (yes, there were complaints ...but no riots). But all o fthis is history. I still think that, unless a FT has a really negative attitude, he will enjoy his experience there.

[lf_aristotle69]

[arioch36]

I know ShengDa very well, Probably better then 99.9% of the teachers who are in CHina, icluding teachers at ShengDa, I have seven years of posting here from CHina to back up my words.

ShengDa has many pros and cons. Contentment there really depends on what the teacher is looking for. it is not a bad college.

What China North laowai had to say was pure garbage.

I do not, as a rule say good or bad things about a school in public, One of the many good things about Shengda, beautiful campus with fresh air, as compared to many places. Bad news, outside the campus will be a total turnoff to the vast majority of us, If you want the night life, this is not the place. Oral English, all 30 students or less.

Regarding the riot. This diploma scam has been going on at literally thousands of colleges in every province. SHengDa basically was being blackmailed. In the beginning, to start this private, well-thought out college, the founder had to accept paying the top Henan college lots of money, with that college having the right to have a party leader as one of the three leaders at ShengDa, and the ShengDa college had to list the top college on their diploma. They had no choice. ShengDa was one of the first colleges to fight against this requirement. The Founder worked very hard to change this. he wanted the diploma to say ShengDa.
Now some of the leaders at ShengDa handled this prety much the way Beijing is handling Tibet ... no discourse allowed. The students were blindsided. the leaders did not handle the situation well. New leaders
But really, we laowai don't understand this diploma game, even many parents don't. Any company in SHanghai does. The number of students that have diplomas that say Tsinghua but never went there far outweighs the numbers of students who went there. As pdaqzy says, tuition is not lower just because the diploma says ShengDa.
And that's probably enough discussion on the politics of college for an open forum

Don't know if I have met pdaqzy, but his/her presentation of ShengDa is pretty balanced, albeit the positive side.

NORTH CHINA LAOWAI ... you should retract everything you wrote.
When did you teach there? Never, I am very sure. I don't know if this is something you heard from soemone. Much of what you wrote is insanely wrong. ShengDa is a real four year college, not an "international college" of failed students. This is 100% factually wrong dead wrong. A blatant lie, or a repeat of something someone told you that you are foolish enough to repeat as firsthand. In my 3,000 posts, I have been consistent of my dislike of the kind of school you are referring to. You are totally wrong!

PS Kev said students can not easily change colleges, very true. For the four year college, the school has all legal rights of the students education

[janeric]

Hi Mary Ann,

I worked at Shengda for 2 years, from Aug 2005 to June 2007, the year of the riot and the year after the riot. I enjoyed my time there both years. To answer your questions:

Do they pay on time? � Yes, the school sets up an Industrial and Commercial Bank of China account for you and direct deposits your monthly salary into it the middle of each month.

Make repairs? � Yes, Mr. Dai is in charge of the teachers apartments. He is very nice and generally makes repairs pretty quickly.

Honor their contract? � Yes, they pay you exactly what it says on your contract. You are required to work the stated number of hours (should be 18/week). Some teachers work 20 hours/week or even more for extra pay. Airfare reimbursement takes about a month or two.

Clean the rooms? � No, you are responsible for cleaning your own apartment. There is no free maid service.

In response to some of the previous posts:

After the riot, the school started treating the students and foreign teachers much better. The students were given more freedom as the school rules were pretty strict before the riot. The school took the foreign teachers on free trips, gave funding to teachers to hold parties, and most importantly, started listening to and responding to teacher concerns cordially and quickly.

Last year, the graduating seniors received diplomas that read "Zhengzhou University Shengda College" instead of "Zhengzhou University" like in the past. I saw some of my students� diplomas.

Now here is my opinion about the pros and cons of the school that might be helpful:

Pros
The students � Most of them are very friendly and eager to learn. Many of them are also very smart. Henan is the most populated province in China, so the college entrance exam is extremely competitive there. Colleges have quotas about how many students they can accept from each province. With the scores some of the students got, they could have gone to top universities if they lived in a different province.

The facilities � the new foreign teachers apartment building (which I lived in my 2nd year) has a weight/fitness room, pool table, ping pong table, several movie rooms, and a lounge on the 1st floor

The Foreign Affairs Office (FAO) � They take care of all the administrative stuff for you � getting your residence permit, registering you with the police, setting up your bank account, taking you to get your medical checkup, etc. You basically just have to show up with your passport. I had to do all this stuff myself this year after I moved to Beijing, and it is such a pain. The FAO is also very friendly and will genuinely try to help you with whatever concerns you may have

The campus � peaceful, pretty, cheap food

Cons
Not much to do outside of campus though it has developed very quickly. The main street is lined with tons of places to eat and buy necessities but not much in terms of entertainment. There is also not much in terms of Western food.

There are very few foreigners in Zhengzhou besides the other teachers.

I enjoyed my time there mainly because of the friendships I was able to form with my students. It�s also a pretty relaxing job, and you will find yourself with a lot of free time. I think I also got to understand the culture of China a lot better than if I had gone to a big city. I got a taste of �real� China there.

Of course, Shengda is not for everyone. If you want to work at a place more like the U.S. or other developed countries with lots of foreigners and entertainment, then you should work in a big city like Shanghai or Beijing. There are plenty of teaching jobs in those cities.

I hope that helps, and I wish you the best on your decision!

[North China Laowei]

Jane,

All of that is fine thank you but ...

I worked at a very large university in another province for a period of time and that university was littered, if you excuse the term, or infused with, Shengda refugee FT's -- at least 15 of them out of a total teaching corpus of about 55-60. I am sorry to say that their collective words were far less charitable than those which you have written.

1. Is or is not the accommodation offered to a single FT essentially a large one room dormitory room with a bathroom? Is or is not these days not the standard one bedroom / one living room dining room / separate kitchen / separate bathroom and washing machine room that is usually offered to FT's in China? I somehow feel that both you and Arioch36 have skirted around that issue.

You mentioned that you lived in the "new" teacher housing in your second year. Where did you live in your first year at the College and in what kind of accommodation do most of the single teachers live?

2. Forgive me, very politely, but I feel that you have also skirted around the lack-of-hot-water issue. All of the Shengda refugees at my school make much about the fact that hot water was essentially rationed in the evening for a few very hours a night.

3. According to the near-majority of the FT's from Shengda that I had the pleasure of working with, they were nearly unanimous in mentioning, counter to what you have written, that there were at least two-or-three occasions, if not more, on which teachers' pay was late, delayed, etc., etc.
Some of them seem to remember this happening whenever the last day of the month fell on a week-end or, for example, in one case that was specifically pointed out to me, and which has just been reconfirmed by email, that over one of the more major holidays, the pay for some of the teachers was nearly 10 days late. Do you have any recollection of such an event?

There are other issues that they have raised and continue to raise which seem the complete opposite of what you have written but first I would hope that you can specifically answer the three points above that I have raised.

Thank you.

[eslstudies]

Hmmm.
Sounds Like a HugeFriendlyGiant [check your Roald Dahl websites} couldn't get a job there.

[7969]

[arioch36]

So here we have three people with first hand knowledge, first hand exeperience with ShengDa College, we all think the college is okay to varying degrees.

And then we have North China Laowai, who has never been to ShengDa, , I will take a wild guess and say he has never taught in henan (he can correct me if I am wrong)

North China Laowai feels the need to make a very strong 10 point statement why ShengDa is a terrible college. Why? You don't really know anything about the college. Then you have to disparage the FT who were at ShengDa and now are at your school. Well gee, what does that say about your school? And if these laowai are such losers, why listen to them.

But the main problem I see here is that laowai doesn't say, "I have heard things about ShengDa, but if someone has never been there, set me straight"

Maybe you (North laowai) want to say that Janeric only has a couple of posts, maybe she is a school stooge. But her posts were balanced, as were

[arioch36]

So