Job Discussion Forums

[elbelz]

A school just offered me a position teaching English at a University in Nanjing. The school looks very legit and it was arranged through Angela's Esl search. I really want to teach in Nanjing because I really love the city.

However, I don't want to accept the contract on the terms they have offered me:

They offered $600US in round-trip airfare. Isn't round-trip airfare standard? $600US is about $300 short of my ticket's cost.

The stated teaching load is light ("You will teach 16 periods per week,and one period lasts for 45 minutes.")Although the ad stated the salary was 4000 RMB, they said in an email that they would only give me 3000RMB but when I said I wanted more they said that it is "negotiable."

The other benefits are medical insurance, an apartment, compensation for gas/water.

They invited me to check out the school, apartment (I'm already in China), and figure out the terms of the contract.

I have a B.A. from a top-tier university in America, no TESOL/TEFL certification, and no teaching experience. What do you think I ought to expect in terms of salary and how should I bargain for more?

[Super Mario]

3000 gives you a fair amount of upward bargaining to do. You'd score that in a rural Hunan middle school. Angela's ESL obviously intends to cream off 1000 per month!. OK, uni salries and hours are quite low. 16 hours is about tops. 4.5-6 is what you should go for. 3 is criminal.
Try talking direct to the [or any] school. Give recruiters the bum's rush.
As for coming from a "top tier" US Uni: useful there, but in China, it counts for nothing.

[no_exit]

If they're offering 3000 your chances of getting 6000 out of them are probably low. However, the school is in Nanjing, it isn't the countryside, or a poverty stricken province. 3000 would be on the low side even out here in Yunnan, so definitely push for at least 4500.

Like Super Mario said, they don't have any concept of what a top rate university in the States is. Your lack of teaching experience is probably what is pushing your salary down a bit. In a year's time you'll have more to bargain with.

[HunanForeignGuy]

Nanjing is the ONE area of China that for whatever reason actually has an oversupply of foreign teachers. Additionally, there are numerous "volunteer" programs in Nanjing that send foreign teachers to Nanjing for a pitance.

It is a known fact that wages for FTs in Nanjing are on the low side. Nonetheless, RMB 3000 is completely out-or-order. The going rate in Nanjing at government schools is RMB 4000 for newbies and those with no experience. Good luck in trying to push it higher.

As for Angela's, they have always done well by me, and by all of my friends that I have sent them. If anyone needs a personal contact at Angela's, just PM me. They are the biggest in China for reasons that I will explain in a PM.

And no, they are not skimming RMB 1,000 off the top every month. They are NOT that kind of an agency. They have been around a long, long time and with good reason. It has more to do with the salary situation in Nanjing and the OP's lack of China experience.

[no_exit]

That would put Nanjing in the same boat as Kunming, basically. We've got waaaay too many FTs here, and more arriving every day, from students looking for part time work, backpackers who decided KM was chill and decided to stay, to missionaries looking for an excuse to get a visa, there are plenty of people ready to take work here, no matter how low paying it may be. 4000/4500 is pretty standard and there ARE jobs paying less, as well as people taking them ...

I gotta say I get a bit annoyed by all the posts that seem to imply that 6000RMB a month should be a standard salary, regardless of experience or location. There are plenty of schools out there paying way less than that and it is misleading to insinuate to newbies that they are getting ripped off if the salary doesn't meet a standard that might be impossible given the circumstances.

(not directed at you in particular Super Mario, just in general).

[adamsmith]

I was offered a position in Nanjing back in January. With a masters and 5 years experience in Asia teaching plus experience back home all they wanted to offer me was 3500 - they would not even negotiate higher. Needless to say I decided I would only visit nanjing - no need to work there. Actually found in my research that this seems to be a standard in this city. As someone else said - I also believe there must be a glut of foreign teachers wanting to go there and work. As in basic economics if supply exceeds demand the price (price in this case being wage) will go down. I myself know I am worth much more so I took a job elsewhere.

[frank d]

Basically � with the exception of the discussion regarding Angela�s ESL agency (I am not familiar with them) � I agree with everything the previous posters have been saying about Nanjing. I have been living and teaching in Nanjing since 2003. I have always worked for training schools, or other types of for-profit English language service companies.

I�ve always wanted to teach for a university in Nanjing. This summer, I was conducting a new job search and a round of interviews, with a few universities included. There were two universities I was particularly interested in working with, mostly due to their location. The job ad for one of the universities stated �4000-5000RMB, depending on experience.�

I have two masters degrees, several years teaching experience in America prior to China, and of course now, three years teaching experience in China (mostly Nanjing). I also have lots of letters of recommendation from former students in Nanjing. During the interview at one of the universities, there was the usual �You�re the kind of teacher we want: experienced and dedicated to his students,� etc.

The Head of the English department and another faculty member and I enjoyed a friendly and productive discussion for almost two hours. I also said that I could offer some special courses and topics (based on the subject areas of my masters� degrees) above and beyond standard English teaching. I did this for three reasons: 1) as a genuine benefit to the students; 2) as a way to enhance the rather dull English curriculum; and 3) as a way to possibly raise the salary above the 5000RMB level. I told them not to make a salary offer that day, but to ponder my suggestions and contact me a few days later with an offer.

Two days later, I receive a message offering me 3600RMB! When I expressed my great surprise that I wasn�t even being offered the low end of the salary scale of 4000RMB, they came back with a new offer: 3800RMB. Forget it! I also asked them if someone with my educational background and years of experience (in America and China) can only receive a salary offer of 3800RMB. Then what kind of teacher �qualifies� to receive the �High-End� salary of 5000RMB??? They never replied.

Training school salaries in Nanjing are plummeting as well. When I first arrived here in 2003, a training center would automatically offer the foreign teacher (with little or no negotiation) 8000RMB per month, plus 1000-1500 monthly housing allowance (to teachers with or without previous experience). Today, most training schools will offer 6000-6500RMB to folks with or without experience.

Indeed, there is obviously a glut of FTs in Nanjing. I wish, for the universities especially, that FTs (experienced or not) would refuse (and walk away from) any salary less than 4500RMB (the standard university salary in 2003). If people keep accepting such laughable wages to live and work in a city like Nanjing, the trend will only continue� Universities need to feel the pinch when its time to begin a new semester and they find themselves without a foreign teacher.

[Super Mario]

Good advice from Frank, and probably applicable across the broad Chinese spectrum.
Shanghai universities also bank on the city's popularity to offer low end salaries whilst students are generally paying high end fees. Trouble is, there's usually some desperado who'll take the 4000 offer and make up any cash flow problem with some pt private work.

[frank d]

Yes, Super Mario, you make another good point -- which raises another problematic issue. Most universities understand because an FTs teaching load is not so high, and the salary is too low, they often will supplement their income with private lessons, part-time teaching at training centers, etc.

It is my opinion (from talking to FTs in this situation) that most universities will agree to this situation, unofficially (and as long as the supplemental work does not interfere with university duties). Again, the powers at the university pretend not to see this is happening, but if later there is a disagreement between the FT and the school, they perhaps will use that situation against the FT, citing breach of contract (most contracts stipulate that off-campus teaching is not allowed).

In essence, this is great situation for the universities, and a potential nightmare for the FT. As long as the FT doesn't "ruffle feathers." he can earn extra wages teaching (because the universities don't pay a professional wage to start with), but they can conveniently use the situation to terminate the FT if there is a disagreement over matters perhaps entirely different from teaching off-campus. It can be a VERY slippery slope!

[Super Mario]

Here's an irony. My then Shanghai "institute" was applying for university status. To gain this they needed a certain ratio of professors. So they signed up some retired Japanese who kind of sat around, being paid to do nothing [nice folk but], as well as an up-market genuine linguistics professor from Shanghai Jiaotong. This guy was moonlighting from there because, despite his Ph.D and head of department status, he wasn't earning enough to lead a comfortable upper middle class life-style. These places actually expect their staff to trade on their reputation to boost their income to a liveable level.
Strange days.

[no_exit]

Sounds exactly like Kunming. When I came here as a newbie, more than three years ago, I was making 2700RMB a month!! The highest paid teacher in our university, a woman with a masters and ages of teaching experience, was making 3500! University jobs here are not much better three years later, with 3000-4000 now being more the norm. When I first came, I didn't know any better, and having previously studied Chinese at the university where I went to work, I felt comfortable with them and didn't think too much about the salary. The other offers I had in Kunming were comparable, and since Kunming jobs don't advertise very much on the internet, my choices were slim anyhow, and sort of based on "connections" with certain universities I had worked with as a student.

But what is someone to do when, for whatever reason, they really want to live in a particular city, and the salaries are just generally low? With the serious glut of foreign teachers in certain places, it just seems inevitable that the salaries are going to be low. In Kunming, for instance, there will always be that guy who just came through after "doing" Southeast Asia, figures out that Yunnan is chilled out and full of cheap dope, and decides, hey, why not stick around, teaching English is pretty easy, and this school will give me a visa and some cash, and if things go bad I've always got mom's credit card anyhow ...

Those kind of people really kill, no, slaughter the market for serious FTs. If I cared about my salary I'd have left long ago. By now I'm making decent money, more than double the average, but that's only after three years here and I have be a director to boot. If any of you tried to come over here, with your years of experience and degrees, I'm sure you'd be disappointed with your options, because you'd end up with 5k IF you were luckly, but if you said "no thanks," the schools wouldn't bat an eyelash because FTs are a dime a dozen around here.

Haha, sorry for the rant. But seriously, do you just accept it, or move onto another city, or what?

[frank d]

Hey, no_exit,

It's not a rant. What you're saying is very valuable and ON THE MONEY! The reason for the present state-of-affairs regarding salaries, especially in Kunming, is not only on the Chinese side of the equation, but perhaps even more so from the side of the non-serious FT who agrees with this slave-wage plan.

This is great for the schools, but bad for the students. THEY know the difference between a teacher who is committed and one is is not!

[no_exit]

You'd think universities would care, at least a bit, about the quality of their teachers. But no, they're actually the worst offenders of all! Training centers, being profit motivated, are usually a tad bit better about wanting to attract teachers who know how to teach and aren't going to bail on them.

The really sad thing is that while in Kunming part of the FT glut is due to backpackers, a big part of it is also due to missionaries. Missionaries, having other motives for working in China, do not usually come over here really needing the higher salaries. Kunming has always been a big big big city for the missionaries due to our abundance of minorities and poor people. What they need, more so than the money, is a visa and a legit reason to stay in China. The job is just an excuse.

In an ideal world, only people who actually cared about teaching would be teachers, and the rest would just bugger off and do their own thing, but we all know that's not going to happen, heh. I just don't see any solution to the problem really. It seems like teachers in these cities are just going to have to suck it up and take the lower salaries if they don't want to move (for me, moving isn't even an option at the moment, otherwise I'd be packing up my fiance and heading for greener pastures. After three years and some change, you get terribly frustrated with the market in this place, believe me!)

[elbelz]

Thanks everybody for resonding. The advice is all very helpful. It would be really nice to take 4,500 from the university but I think at this point that is wishful thinking. I wasn't aiming higher than 4,000, and am hoping to land somewhere between 3,500 and 4,000.

What is reasonable to expect from a university in Nanjing? I mean am I screwing myself here? The hours are low after all, and that is most important to me because then I can do well by my students and have time to further my Chinese progress (which is why I came here).　I was under the impression that 3,500 is standard for lower teaching loads.
And it's not like we have a union to press for higher wages.

Also, do you have any tips as to how I should bargain? I think if I can�t get 3,500 I will walk away, but I really want to be in Nanjing since it is a pleasant place with lots of young Chinese people.

[NathanRahl]

Actaully 3500 is very low. I spent a lot of time just searching and researching, and really, for 20 hours a week, 3,500 is not good. Upper end is 5,000 to 5,500, which seems the tops for someone with a degree even. You can get 5,000 without a degree, but they need to be desperate as far as time goe's and you need to be a good negotiator. I have seen some rare outfits that actually pay 6,000 for this amount fo hours, but that is ideal situation, they need you, you know to ask for that amount. I also have to say that the pot smoking traveler looking for some cash and a plce to stayin exchange for english realy annoys me as well. Being a professional teacher, I am here for the experience yes, but I would also like to make some money, and these folks really suck out the ability for honest good teachers to do just that. As long as there are layabouts who think teaching english is easy, and as long as their are people here who will hire them, real teachers won't make what they should be in china. Not surprising really, since teachers the world over are undervalued and underpaid. To more thoroughly answer your question, you should be making 5,000. Also, ask about the office hours, if there are any then you should be making the max for the market right now for those amount of hours, 5,500, even 6,000, but thats unlikely. If you can get a six month contract, with a wink wink that you would likely sign another if you liked the job after 6 months, then you can renegotiate for a higher salary muh sooner. I found this out too late unfortunantly. Hope this helps, take care.