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adaruby
Joined: 21 Apr 2014
Posts: 171
Location: has served on a hiring committee
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 Posted: Wed Mar 04, 2015 6:22 am Post subject: |
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| ttxor1 wrote: |
| toiyeuthitmeo wrote: |
Have several friends still at RMIT and have what I'd like to think is a pretty good understanding of the over all market in VN.
The TL;DR is that any RMIT teacher who had a Delta or MA (even in unrelated field to language) was given a much less severe pay cut. Those lacking an MA or Delta were given plenty of notice about the impending change and a lot of them did get started on the Delta and will also face less severe pay cuts. IIRC RMIT even helped pay for the Delta for a lot of these guys.
Anyone with mimumum quals faced a big pay cut, like, huge. So a lot took off or will take off at end of current contracts. This even includes people who'd been there for years and reached the higher pay bracket ("Educator" I think it was called).
For years, RMIT teachers were making loads more money than other teaching gigs in Vietnam. Even my friends there will admit that they were probably over-paid. They were making as much as DOS/AMs at other language schools. This is with having no special certification other than a Uni degree and a CELTA-style cert. (And yes, more than a few boasting Delta, MA TESOL, or unrelated MA).
Lots of these folks didn't do much to improve their minimal qualifications, but just coasted happily making the big bucks and enjoying RMIT's ample teaching resources (which from my understanding means that lesson planning was not much of chore most of the time).
Teachers could move up the ladder to I think what is called the Educator position, which was basically just a higher pay grade. This was possible by seniority, so you had people on even more money who had not really done anything to advance except be there, not mess up, and perhaps gain favor with mgmnt.
Seniority is all fine and good in this regard, but the market and perhaps VN laws are now more interested in rewarding qualifications than years of experience. Furthermore there is an overall downward trend in pay and benefits. The schools research what each other are paying, and when the big guys like ILA start cutting bonuses and making pay raises harder to get, the rest of the schools take note. |
Thanks very much for this comprehensive update on RMIT/Vietnam, toiyeuthitmeo. I'd only quibble with you on the sentence "...but the market and perhaps VN laws are now more interested in rewarding qualifications than years of experience."
ILA clearly values experience, and particularly post-CELTA experience, over qualifications:
I personally know a number of teachers who have post-CELTA experience, but no Delta/MA TESOL, and are on scale 4 or 5. I know one person who has an MA TESOL, but no post-CELTA experience (when hired), and is on scale 1.
A question that keeps nagging me, then, is why does ILA value post-CELTA experience over a relevant advanced degree?
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Did the MA have a practical component? |
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Dave_1
Joined: 11 Feb 2007
Posts: 88
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| Posted: Wed Mar 04, 2015 6:36 am Post subject: |
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| isabel wrote: |
| Dave_1 wrote: |
I am seeing very long term RMIT educators have left..1/3rd have gone..all long termers and very professional teachers..these were people I recall were taking higher teaching qualifications part-time. Some of these people have families. I can bet they did not want the chaos of leaving RMIT and/or Vietnam when with young families. I worked there for a couple of years and it was good...and I can see why teachers settle for Saigon, establish lives there..but it sounds very unfair. RMIT were totally over staffed when I was there and some of us got paid well for doing very little in class teaching. Coordinators did no teaching, which was also not right. At times when Coordinators away, everything still ran fine...it was not a high productivity role they had. The 30 teachers sitting in teachers room 3 days a week not doing anything and coordinators under utilised was where management needed to look. That was where drain on productivity was, not on long termers with families now forced out.
So, it would seem it is no exaggeration to say RMIT has gone down hill. 1st serg welsh, if he is in contact with anyone there, will know there has been an exodus of long term teachers who knew the job well and kept newer arrivals right, knew what materials of the many worked. |
Exactly right. The cream of the experienced educators have left, and many have families and small children, and have been there for years. The program has been struggling for several years, and it was obvious that there would be changes. Unfortunately, a lot of money was wasted on attempts to improve things (new programs and projects, etc.) that were poorly conceived and executed. I have to say, when I was there the coordinators were teaching classes, covering classes, and dealing with a lot. There always was a group, though, who seemed to do f'all and continually had the short schedules and few responsibilities. Favoritism is a fact of life, but it doesn't make it palatable to those outside of the golden circle.
Heaven knows how they will restructure things, but one thing is certain, the core faculty and the institutional memory have gone, the wages have gone way down, and it is hard to see that going in a good direction.
On the other hand, those who left got good severance packages, from what I have heard, and change can be a very good thing. |
the 8 hr day was wide open to abuse and the amount of phone in sick cases was through the roof. The 8hr day was treated as 4hr day if one really wanted it to be. Nobody looked for you. That needed changed...not running all the long termers with families out of RMIT, which looks like case. HR ran some really bizzare workshops (code of conduct workshop being first time I had a bad impression of hr) and higher ups at RMIT seemed unaware they were employing 30 teachers too many (if one walked into staff room on any day..some had 2 days of teaching or 3, then 2 days off) so there were indeed about 30 sitting around not working much...that is where money was wasted. I enjoyed RMIT though..it was good, but many ways of solving issues rather than throwing sledge hammer on those who committed most to RMIT, to teaching |
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isabel
Joined: 07 Mar 2003
Posts: 510
Location: God's green earth
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| Posted: Wed Mar 04, 2015 7:06 am Post subject: |
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That was the frustrating part - the myopia on the part of management. The sick day policy was ridiculous. You could set your watch by who would call in when on Monday morning sick (at the beach, and maybe hung over?) The people on "special projects" for term after term amazed me. I knew one person who didn't teach for 3 terms in a row, and didn't even have sick cover. I also knew some who were actually embarrassed by their own light schedules.
Yet there were really admirable, professional faculty who worked hard and seldom caught a break in the scheduling. They carried the water, and they are the ones leaving.
Management seemed to both watch everything and notice nothing, well, nothing except if your footwear wasn't up to standards. (A particular fetish of one of the managers.)
My very best wishes to those professionals who are moving on. |
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Dave_1
Joined: 11 Feb 2007
Posts: 88
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| Posted: Wed Mar 04, 2015 7:26 am Post subject: |
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| isabel wrote: |
That was the frustrating part - the myopia on the part of management. The sick day policy was ridiculous. You could set your watch by who would call in when on Monday morning sick (at the beach, and maybe hung over?) The people on "special projects" for term after term amazed me. I knew one person who didn't teach for 3 terms in a row, and didn't even have sick cover. I also knew some who were actually embarrassed by their own light schedules.
Yet there were really admirable, professional faculty who worked hard and seldom caught a break in the scheduling. They carried the water, and they are the ones leaving.
Management seemed to both watch everything and notice nothing, well, nothing except if your footwear wasn't up to standards. (A particular fetish of one of the managers.)
My very best wishes to those professionals who are moving on. |
Yes, am just laughing remembering the sickies people pulled off week after week. The special projects was a great way of staying unaccountable.. didn't do much of that..but it meant no teaching for a term. Some of the long termers teaching higher levels were absolutely key to navigating the huge amount of materials for the level to decide what worked, what to do with REW texts, how to structure writing lessons correctly to get students into degrees after L7. Only an idiot would want to lose people of their skills set. HR were particularly bad for spamming our inboxes with all sorts of invites to seminars, workshops, meetings ...it was like they had nothing to do or were empire building and the hypothetical staff discipline breaches they asked us to ponder in this code of conduct workshop gave me impression they had too much time on their hands or a budget to waste . The people above program manager, I'd see them in the Lygon chatting a lot..they I presume are behind some of this and rarely ever seen in the teacher's room so clueless. |
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1st Sgt Welsh
Joined: 13 Dec 2010
Posts: 946
Location: Bandar Seri Begawan, Brunei
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| Posted: Wed Mar 04, 2015 9:25 am Post subject: |
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| Dave_1 wrote: |
| 1st serg welsh, if he is in contact with anyone there, will know there has been an exodus of long term teachers who knew the job well and kept newer arrivals right, knew what materials of the many worked. |
It seems the more senior you were, the less likely it is that you are there now. This is because, from my understanding, the conditions for 'instructors' (as opposed to 'educators') haven't changed that much. There was a fairly large exodus a week or so ago, but, like I posted earlier, I still have a lot of friends who are still there.
In regards to your other comments Dave_1, to be honest, I think that's a pretty fair overall assessment. Although I have never been a Western civil servant, RMIT did, I imagine, have a similar kind of environment. However, I'm not sure if I agree with your comments about the co-ordinators. The co-ordinators I dealt with worked hard and were extremely helpful and approachable, but, how much of their time was spent/wasted coping with bureaucracy from Melbourne and other departments is a different matter. I do agree that there were people who didn't do their fair share in regards to teaching, but, I certainly wasn't one of them. I just put my head down and concentrated on my own job. In a workplace I think that's best and I try not to worry about what other people people are doing or getting and, for every teacher who was 'coasting' at RMIT, I know that there were several more like me who were making meaningful contributions. That, of course, doesn't mean it was necessarily right and, like I said, there is a lot that you have written that I agree with wholeheartedly. |
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Dave_1
Joined: 11 Feb 2007
Posts: 88
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| Posted: Wed Mar 04, 2015 10:23 am Post subject: |
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| 1st Sgt Welsh wrote: |
| Dave_1 wrote: |
| 1st serg welsh, if he is in contact with anyone there, will know there has been an exodus of long term teachers who knew the job well and kept newer arrivals right, knew what materials of the many worked. |
It seems the more senior you were, the less likely it is that you are there now. This is because, from my understanding, the conditions for 'instructors' (as opposed to 'educators') haven't changed that much. There was a fairly large exodus a week or so ago, but, like I posted earlier, I still have a lot of friends who are still there.
In regards to your other comments Dave_1, to be honest, I think that's a pretty fair overall assessment. Although I have never been a Western civil servant, RMIT did, I imagine, have a similar kind of environment. However, I'm not sure if I agree with your comments about the co-ordinators. The co-ordinators I dealt with worked hard and were extremely helpful and approachable, but, how much of their time was spent/wasted coping with bureaucracy from Melbourne and other departments is a different matter. I do agree that there were people who didn't do their fair share in regards to teaching, but, I certainly wasn't one of them. I just put my head down and concentrated on my own job. In a workplace I think that's best and I try not to worry about what other people people are doing or getting and, for every teacher who was 'coasting' at RMIT, I know that there were several more like me who were making meaningful contributions. That, of course, doesn't mean it was necessarily right and, like I said, there is a lot that you have written that I agree with wholeheartedly. |
I think it was right some educators were reviewed, but a lot of them had good knowledge, skills, work ethic so were not the people to be taking down. Now instructors coming up from L4 will have to just do trial and error on their way through I guess. It was unbelievable that a large number of teachers were on 3 day weeks teaching, and 2 days not doing much prep and clocking off way early. As you worked there, you will have seen the number of people sat there in office behind pc or chatting, or in lygon when you were in class....that was a huge waste of money, as were a few of the educators, but many not. The 3 day week or special projects, or CEP all should have gone well before any of the committed longer term educators or coordinators did. |
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1st Sgt Welsh
Joined: 13 Dec 2010
Posts: 946
Location: Bandar Seri Begawan, Brunei
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| Posted: Wed Mar 04, 2015 12:20 pm Post subject: |
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| Dave_1 wrote: |
I think it was right some educators were reviewed, but a lot of them had good knowledge, skills, work ethic so were not the people to be taking down. Now instructors coming up from L4 will have to just do trial and error on their way through I guess. It was unbelievable that a large number of teachers were on 3 day weeks teaching, and 2 days not doing much prep and clocking off way early. As you worked there, you will have seen the number of people sat there in office behind pc or chatting, or in lygon when you were in class....that was a huge waste of money, as were a few of the educators, but many not. The 3 day week or special projects, or CEP all should have gone well before any of the committed longer term educators or coordinators did. |
There is nothing written above that I personally disagree with. The only thing I would say is that I didn't have a lot to do with CEP so I'd rather not comment on that. In regards to money being spent unwisely, yeah, and, like I said, I always thought the place had a certain 'civil service' feel about it. Maybe what's happening now is that they are trying to shut the gate after the horse has bolted, and, whilst I don't want to sound like a Monday morning quarterback, maybe the restructuring could have been avoided if there had been a more conservative approach to the bottom line to begin with. However, the university finances weren't my bag and I was there to teach. As far as the teaching and remuneration went it was great and I have no regrets whatsoever about having worked there. |
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Dave_1
Joined: 11 Feb 2007
Posts: 88
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| Posted: Wed Mar 04, 2015 12:57 pm Post subject: |
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| 1st Sgt Welsh wrote: |
| Dave_1 wrote: |
I think it was right some educators were reviewed, but a lot of them had good knowledge, skills, work ethic so were not the people to be taking down. Now instructors coming up from L4 will have to just do trial and error on their way through I guess. It was unbelievable that a large number of teachers were on 3 day weeks teaching, and 2 days not doing much prep and clocking off way early. As you worked there, you will have seen the number of people sat there in office behind pc or chatting, or in lygon when you were in class....that was a huge waste of money, as were a few of the educators, but many not. The 3 day week or special projects, or CEP all should have gone well before any of the committed longer term educators or coordinators did. |
There is nothing written above that I personally disagree with. The only thing I would say is that I didn't have a lot to do with CEP so I'd rather not comment on that. In regards to money being spent unwisely, yeah, and, like I said, I always thought the place had a certain 'civil service' feel about it. Maybe what's happening now is that they are trying to shut the gate after the horse has bolted, and, whilst I don't want to sound like a Monday morning quarterback, maybe the restructuring could have been avoided if there had been a more conservative approach to the bottom line to begin with. However, the university finances weren't my bag and I was there to teach. As far as the teaching and remuneration went it was great and I have no regrets whatsoever about having worked there. |
I concur with you. I enjoyed working there and if it's still the same at instructor level, it's very worth having a try at if in Vietnam |
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nfig77
Joined: 20 Jun 2011
Posts: 52
Location: ITB Research Facility in Shenzhen
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isabel
Joined: 07 Mar 2003
Posts: 510
Location: God's green earth
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| Posted: Tue Mar 24, 2015 4:28 pm Post subject: |
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Apart from the part-time "sessional" positions, the educator and instructor (er, associate educator) descriptions look the same. In fact, the description for educator is dated 2013.
The pay rates are not listed. I wonder what they are? And why did they run off so many very good people? |
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EFL Educator
Joined: 17 Jul 2013
Posts: 988
Location: Cape Town
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| Posted: Wed Mar 25, 2015 2:37 am Post subject: |
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A pool of part timers, no hourly wage mentioned....no other benefits...sounds to me this outfit is operating an EFL "temporary teacher" service...too many teachers looking for work....and very few job vacancies out there!  |
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nfig77
Joined: 20 Jun 2011
Posts: 52
Location: ITB Research Facility in Shenzhen
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| Posted: Wed Mar 25, 2015 4:49 pm Post subject: |
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| isabel wrote: |
Apart from the part-time "sessional" positions, the educator and instructor (er, associate educator) descriptions look the same. In fact, the description for educator is dated 2013.
The pay rates are not listed. I wonder what they are? And why did they run off so many very good people? |
It seems to me the firings were simply to cut costs. Further to this, a business model of mostly adjuncts, if successful, would also keep costs down. I would expect the hourly wage (@20 hours/wk) to equate to about 50-60% of what a full-time "educator" gets on an annual basis, and without benefits such as sick leave and health insurance. Interesting to note is that they want at least a 12-month commitment from part-timers as well! So the people best suited for these jobs are retirees (e.g., with a pension), or a spouse looking to make a bit of extra cash. Depending on how big of a pool they can generate and maintain, the ratio of full-timers to part-timers should continue to decrease. |
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nfig77
Joined: 20 Jun 2011
Posts: 52
Location: ITB Research Facility in Shenzhen
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| Posted: Wed Mar 25, 2015 5:13 pm Post subject: |
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| EFL Educator wrote: |
| A pool of part timers, no hourly wage mentioned....no other benefits...sounds to me this outfit is operating an EFL "temporary teacher" service...too many teachers looking for work....and very few job vacancies out there! |
That sounds about right, a total buyer's market out there. Sellers beware! |
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Dave_1
Joined: 11 Feb 2007
Posts: 88
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| Posted: Sat Mar 28, 2015 11:46 am Post subject: |
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| Info I received is English Instructors are being taken down by 1/3rd from what the existing salary was ..and there is a salary differential...some are on existing 2 year contracts on the old pay rate of 2.5k a month with new arrivals down nearer 2k...for same job. RMIT want full timers in 8 hrs a day 5 days a week...it was a good deal on old terms but not sure it is now. |
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nfig77
Joined: 20 Jun 2011
Posts: 52
Location: ITB Research Facility in Shenzhen
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| Posted: Sun Mar 29, 2015 4:58 am Post subject: |
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| How about the "educators"? They were on $4k or so weren't they? |
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