Job Discussion Forums

inlightened · Joined: 02 Jul 2007 Posts: 7 Location: Florida

I know that someone already asked this but the feedback was quite minimal and I just wanted to hear what others had to say. I have a CELTA certificate and plan to move to Costa Rica soon. I do not have a Bachelors yet so I was wondering are there a decent amount of schools that will hire someone in my position or should I look somewhere else? Any advice would be very much appreciated! Very Happy

OleLarssen · Joined: 26 Apr 2006 Posts: 337

If you've a CELTA degree and you're not a retard or appear as such, you shouldn't have a problem finding work. Universities etc might require you to have some kind of BA, but as far as I understand it the BA "requirement" is mostly to filter out young people.

Maybe JOHN HALL has more information since he actually works in a university. I know that I was never asked about my BA nor required to prove that I actually had one in the private schools I was interviewed at.

inlightened · Joined: 02 Jul 2007 Posts: 7 Location: Florida

Ha, well I'm only in my twenties, do you think thats too young or no? Laughing

John Hall · Posted: Fri Jul 06, 2007 9:55 pm Post subject:

I can't see any CR universities hiring someone without a university degree. However, this is probably not a problem for most private language institutes and company class providers.

inlightened · Joined: 02 Jul 2007 Posts: 7 Location: Florida

Well I'm actually most interested in working with kids so I'm not planning on applying to any universities.

snorklequeen · Posted: Sat Jul 07, 2007 6:17 am Post subject: Degree and universities

okay, well, here's a question 4 u-all: how about a mature female with (i) a college undergraduate degree [BS] and a graduate degree [JD], (ii) an ESL certificate, and (iii) no ESL teaching experience. what are the chances of getting a uni teaching job?

John Hall · Posted: Sat Jul 07, 2007 2:26 pm Post subject:

You might get lucky. Sometimes if you show up at the beginning of semester, and they don't have enough teachers, they may hire you. But under normal circumstances they won't, because they need people who already have teaching experience. Also, they don't want professors who are more interested in surfing at the beach or hanging out in Puerto Viejo de Talamanca. Let's face it: backpackers are quite likely to take off in the middle of the term to their next country once they have earned enough money to do so. The parents of students pay a lot of hard-earned money to send their kids to these schools, and so they can't be taught by such transient and non-committal English teachers.

At ULACIT, teachers must have a minimum of two years experience and legal working papers to be hired.

There are some quasi-universities (usually referred to as "universitarios" in Spanish) that have lower standards, but I don't recommend them. On occasion, some of them are shut down by the government. Others are legit, but still, their English programs are usually pretty terrible.

One university that might be interested in you, though, is U.I.A. (Universidad Internacional de las Americas). They're in Los Yoses. They have English programs based on their academic programs. (I.e., English for Pharmacy, English for Business, English for Computer Science.) It all depends on what you studied at university. Unfortunately, I don't have up-to-date contact info for them any more though.