Job Discussion Forums

[fadoop]

What's going on with salaries in China? The first two times I taught in the country (2002, 2003) I received 8000 RMB a month. Now all the postings mention 5000 with some offering as low as 3500. I know the argument � "Compared to what everyone else is making, this is decent money for China, blah blah blah" � but I still think it's ridiculously low and teachers should be demanding more money. After all, the standard of living is going up in China not down.

Am I looking in the wrong places for jobs?[/i]

[Sinobear]

What's going on is that recruiters are slotting a base salary for teachers at 4K while pocketing an extra 2K for themselves ...still saving the schools 2K a month. There's no tax on 4K a month, and thus illegal hiring of unqualified teachers doesn't get reported.
There's no shortage of absolute suckers who think that 4K a month is "grand money", after all, if you are leaving the bosom of mommy and daddy and a $25 a week allowance for cleaning your room and cutting the grass is swell - then 4K a month is heaven.

Glad you asked this question, fadoop. Perhaps if more people asked this, and refused such pitiful salaries, then schools would have to ante up a fair portion of what they're making to hire a FT.

Cheers!

[Brian Caulfield]

And how many of these suckers never see their final pay checks . My last job they tried to tell me that a return trip to my home country meant Korea. I am Canadian which meant a difference of 7,000 rmb . I got the money by putting my fist through the head masters desk . "Call the police I am going to be deported " I shouted to my interpretor . I was serious and was ready to do serious damage .
Funny thing is the two English lads they hired to replace me were soldiers with out even BA's . In their free time they practiced martial arts .

[Roger]

Simpletons have in the past always pointed out that there is a mechanism called "supply and demand"; if truth be told most people are overpaid when you take into account their job description: they are not hired as teachers but as emcees, entertainers or white faces to attract paying learners. Most don't teach at all - they do conversation practice.
The Chinese are waking up to the fact that they can teach English without investing in expensive white faces that supposedly prod Chinese to "speak English". Chinese students increasingly complain that FTs "know nothing", "don't speak a second tongue" or "don't even know what our teachers know". Many western males are also viewed as something akin to sexual pests and predators.
The salaries clearly peaked during the 2002-2003 period. They have come down to a more realistic level. Realistic? Yes, realistic! You can still top them up easily enough.

[fadoop]

<<The Chinese are waking up to the fact that they can teach English without investing in expensive white faces that supposedly prod Chinese to "speak English">>

The Chinese can teach English? Yeah, right. The reason the Chinese can't speak English now is because the Chinese English teachers who taught them during elementary school, middle school, and high school can't string together more than two sentences in English. It's the same way in Korea, where i just came from.

[millie]

[no_exit]

I think Roger is onto something with his last post.

I agree that the Chinese are starting to see foreign teachers as overvalued and overpriced. What I think happened was that Chinese schools made the mistake in the first place of hiring many underqualified and incompetant teachers, simply because those teachers had foreign looks, and thus added some kind of "prestige" to their outfit.

What they are now realizing is that a foreign face doesn't do jack for actual English learning. A good Chinese teacher is much more effective than a bad foreign teacher. While true there are many foreign teachers who are excellent teachers, the market is flooded with FTs who are simply banking on their white faces to get them jobs. The Chinese are no longer willing to pay top dollar for performing monkeys.

I saw one job posting recently which illustraded this. It was a job in Luoyang, I believe, at a university. The job was offering something like 5k a month as a base salary for candidates with BAs. Those holding an MA would get 6k, and those with a PhD would get 8k. At the university I used to work at, the salary, as well as job perks, are much better for higher degree holders. The Chinese still seem willing to pay higher salaries, but they are demanding higher standards in return.

In the end, the low paying jobs are left for recent graduates, people with little experience just starting out, or backpackers looking for a way to fund a year in China. Am I completely off-base here? It seems fair enough to me.

[Babala]

I agree with both no_exit and Roger. I think alot of schools are getting fed up with unqualified FT's. If you have the qualifications and the experience you will still be able to get a good paying job in China.

[Volodiya]

Can a consensus be developing here?

Roger, no_exit and Babala's posts suggest a further rationalizing of the process of evaluating and compensating teachers of English is occuring, across China. That can't be a bad thing, in the long run.

[Talkdoc]

...

[tofuman]

I'll admit that I am not a qualified "English teacher." Why would I be?

Even so, I demanded a 25% salary increase after my first year or permission to free lance outside. The school gave me the raise. They have since lowered the starting salary and benefits. I would advise no one to work for 2500/month and one way airfare. I wouldn't be surprised if the FAO purposely made the job unattractive so he won't have to deal with more FTs.

I recently rejected an offer from a reputable university after viewing the "rathole" accomodations they were offering. Their initial salary offer was in the 4-5K range


China is a great place except for one thing-most of its inhabitants.

[nolefan]

it boils down to supply and demand. Supply is catching up with the demand in quite a few parts of the country so the schools don't feel like they need to raise the salaries.
Some cities have gotten really crappy as far as salaries go like Shijiazhuang in Hebei. That town is so bloddy dirty that I get an asthma attack everytime I go there. yet, laowais love it to the point where the going rate for private classes is below 100rmb/hour. it's horrifying but that how it is.

The schools either don't care about quality or they are not willing to deal with all the headaches associated with having a foreign teacher. We can b+tch about the schools all we want but there are a few foreigners out there who give us a bad name and make it extremely hard to establish any kind of working relationship with a school after they've been there.

Don't get me wrong here! I am a teacher and I'm on the teachers' side but we gotta admit at some point that these forums are not reflective of the reality of the ESL field in China. This place is heavily biased towards the teachers and overly critical of the schools and agencies.

It's not a case of one teacher here and there making it bad for the rest of us; there are quite a few. Most of us forget that FAO meet on a monthly basis to exchange notes and keep tabs on who's working where so news travel fast and trust vanishes.

We don't trust them, they don't trust us!

[william wallace]

Nothing to say.

[Zero Hero]

Here in Hong Kong my salary automatically increases by $1,000 a month at the commencement of each academic year (with a maximum of 40-odd incremental increases allowed). Do you have the same on the Mainland? If not, why not push for it? Now would be a good time. After all, it is the 'world's fastest growing economy'. (Or maybe that is why it is the world's fastest growing economy � they are free of the burden of proper labour costs.)

[sigmoid]

Well, the reason they get such lousy people is because

1) they don't offer much money
2) China isn't exactly a primo destination
3) the demand for English teachers in Asia is very high, giving rise to stiff competition between countries i. e. people can easily go elsewhere
4) countries like China don't seem to realise that they are competing for foreign teachers and thus end up creating a situation where they actually repel people who might potentially perhaps might consider teaching in their country.