Job Discussion Forums

[razorhideki]

Not trying to start a flame war-it's just that my thesis(so to speak) is not a cheery one: I've come to the conclusion that the EFL racket in E. Asia is regressing, not progressing(for the benefits for FTs, that is). It's fair to give readers a brief summary of my background. A little less than 14 yrs. ago, I got into this EFL racket. I've taught at public schools, a private outfit, and a "university" in Japan, Korea and the PRC. Nine years in total. I've a BA, BEd and TEFL Cert. Here we go....

Japan: Aside from JET(and I agree that JET is a damned good gig; even so, salaries haven't gone up in 15-odd years), how many decent gigs are left? A decade ago guys were rather sheepish in admitting they got only the mythical "visa minimum"(250,000/mo.); now people are signing contracts for 180,000/mo.(!)and spending thousands of their own bucks just to get set up?! Non-JET direct hires are going the way of the do-do bird & SDCs(shady dispatch companies) are becoming the order of the day.

S. Korea: Where do I even begin? Always the least desirable E. Asian locale to live in, even the sweetened pot is souring. Hagwons are as bad as ever. Public schools? Forget JET-like contracts. Little vacation time, decreasing salaries(factor in exchange rates),etc. Visa regulations and the trouble & expense thereof, have made Korea a "no-go"-not to mention blatantly racist medical requirements.

China: Still many contracts offering 4K quai/mo. And people are still signing up!

OK...countries I haven't taught in....


HK: Aside from NET, I hear precious little that's positive. Even though NET has few complaints about pay & benefits, there's a SLEW of complaints as to how admin. treats them.

Vietnam: Given the cost of living, $2K/mo. should entail a good gig. Even so, google a prospective VN employer and there seems to be a SLEW of complaints.

Thailand? Taiwan? You get the point...if you disagree, fine. Not looking for flames...hell, go ahead & try to convince me I'm wrong...I welcome it.

[Porlestone]

No war needed and in fact, I agree with your thesis. I've thought about it and felt it, particularly for about the last year or so.

For the last six years straight I've spent a year or more in Korea, Taiwan, Vietnam. I also spent a year in Japan in the mid-90s. Presently in Thailand, where you are doing "well" if you are living month-to-month with your salary. You'd be doing nice if you actually saved up a plane ticket at the end of a year. You'll have warm weather and good food as your sole benefits, and adult venues to linger in if they don't tire you out or make you grow wary so soon.

Korea over the last several years seems to be in a long "crackdown" phase. They even produced TV shows exploring the "exploitative foreigners."

Vietnam is growing quite similar. They release news articles that fuel their fires. Current visa hassles and run arounds, employers growing chips on their shoulders, holding the visa over the teachers' heads. In a part that isn't related to the schools but will affect you, a monetary situation that is terrible. You'll be paid in local currency that is worthless anywhere else in the world. Good luck getting a decent exchange rate locally into another currency before leaving the country.

Taiwan was actually quite strict in my experience. The Chinese seem to be rather fun to mingle and socialize with, but can be helacious (sp?) to work under. However I was right in Taipei, and was told the further out you go, the schools and admins are more relaxed. Credibility of the source not verified, but I would tend to imagine it could be so.

The best thing to do is be wealthy before getting to Asia, then pick and choose where you go and as you wish. With a lot of funds to fall back on, a decent -- not wonderful -- life can be had. More caution is recommended than say, the 90s.

[eclectic]

Ive been 1.5 years in the south of S> Korea away from big cities and Ive got a great female boss, very generous, always cutting me breaks with arriving 10 mins. before class, etc. With my 2.2 million I can save 1.3 million/month which is about $1000 US a month. I cant complain about that. Yes the social "life" is frustrating, the staring, the bowing, the inflexibility the naivete, etc., but in general I could be at 1 of those nightmare hakwons Im reading about every day. My boss begged me to renew the contract loast year and is already begging me 6 mos. into this one to renew again. Made me suspicious at first, but she likes me and I like her and everything's pretty darn good, work-wise anyway.

Wouldnt want a break-even thing in VN or Thai for sure. Japan's too expensive. South Korea still the best bet IM limited O.

[Worldly]

[Tainan]

Probably true to some extent. A lot of this is simple supply and demand. The more foreign teachers there are, the more picky schools can be. I think there are many, many times more foreigners in Korea now than there were in 1995, when I first went there, which makes it less of a buyer's market for the teacher. The only way that would change would be if fewer foreigners wanted to go there; given the perennial attractiveness of exotic travel to the very young, I don't see that happening, although an improvement in the job situation in the U.S. might help somewhat.

In 1995, people were already saying that Japan was saturated and didn't pay enough relative to cost of living. Teachers in Korea were doing nothing but complaining, then as now. The big difference might be China. While living in Korea sometime in 97 or 98 I met one guy who had taught in Mainland China--the very idea of doing that was amazing. Now there are hundreds of foreigners teaching in China. China's population could be big enough to absorb a LOT of the foreign teacher population.

Basically, the assumption back in 1995 was that the quality of life for an FT was in inverse proportion to the number of other FTs there, for simple supply-and-demand reasons. Japan was the past (had been great in the 80s, now was saturated); Korea was the present; China, Vietnam etc. were the future.

Now here's my rant:

For me the fly in the ointment--a very big fly--has always been the work-visa demand, which essentially puts a teacher at the mercy of the school which has granted the visa. The school can then make any demands it wants: work from eight in the morning until ten at night; require the teacher to show up a full hour before his first class starts. Worse yet, it seeps into our own mentality. Look at the conversations here (and they have not changed since 1995): in any other plane of existence, someone who quits his job (assuming he gives a bit of decent notice) is a free human being exercising his right to move on when he isn't happy where he is. In this field, someone who quits a job is breaking a contract, deserting his responsibilities, and an all-around bad guy. In the minds of sane people, someone who travels the globe, working a month here and a month there, is enjoying his youth and doing some good work among the people he visits, who appreciate his work while he's there and respect his right to move on when he wants to move on. In this field, someone who does that is regarded as irresponsible. (Why? Does responsible work only come in one-year packages? A lot of the English students of Asia would probably be better off with one teacher for one month and another for another. They'd meet all kinds of people, be exposed to all kinds of ways of speaking English, and they wouldn't get bored.) In the real world, someone who works for himself, advertising his services and finding clients without a middle-man is respected as an entrepeneur. In this field, someone who does that is working illegally! Yet in all my years in Asia, I invariably taught much better lessons "illegally" than in schools. Something about the environment--meeting in a home, vs. an office building--and the freedom of choosing a curriculum that suited the teacher and the student, without interference from some boss--made it better.

[Glenski]

[adrianmark]

I've been regularly pulling in 20,000 yuan per month in China for the past 5 years. No complaint here.

Simple formula - work hard, prepare your classes, don't make unnecessary waves and be committed to your profession.

Seems pretty simple to me.

[runthegauntlet]

[InTheKnow]

[razorhideki]

Appreciate the replies, although to the guy(who says he makes 20,000 quai/mo.) who seems to insinuate that to be hard working and "professional" guarantees big bucks in the EFL teaching world in E. Asia, I'd say you have an insular view.

Korea is worth expanding upon, because it might be the greatest example of how quickly things can go to rat****.

Not only have salaries stagnated(even gone down) but any pretence to a lack of xenophobia has gone the way of the do-do. There's very strong evidence that the Anti-English Spectrum group has the ear of the ROK government. This would roughly be like, to use an analogy, the Klan having influence with the U.S. Sec. of State.

Part of the application procedure(for just one employer!) now involves getting a CRC (at your expense), getting it notarized(at your expense) and then sending it to a ROK embassy or consulate to get an official stamp on it(for which you pay a fee!) and then and only then can you send it along to a prospective employer! NO KOREAN teacher is required to produce a CRC for a job!

Assuming you get past all the paperwork BS and get a contract, the fun ain't over yet. Sometime after your arrival in the Land of the Morning Calm, you'll have to take a medical(again, at your expense). Flunk it, and bye-bye visa & contract and home you go-at your expense! A key part of the medical is the drug/HIV test but guess what? NO KOREAN teacher is required to submit to such tests.

Apologists for this blatantly racist(to say nothing of illogical) BS might say something like "Well, JET asks for this stuff too". No, they don't. Yes, they want a CRC but there's none of this apostille/notary public nonsense. And the medical is done in your hometown, by your family doctor, BEFORE you take off for Japan.


The irony of this BS is lost on the ROK authorities. In their zeal to keep out "riff raff", it's actually the legit teachers who are saying "To hell with Korea, I'll go somewhere else."

Glenski: I put the univ. I was at in China in quotation marks because any outfit that calls itself a "univ." is not worthy of the name, if....

1) Students expect to get passing grades for doing no work.
2) You will not hear ONE, SINGLE dissenting opinion amongst several thousand students if someone states that
-Japan is evil
-Taiwan is a renegade province
-1989 massacre? What massacre?
-The Dalai Lama is a terrorist

Disraeli on the university as an institution: "A place of light, liberty and learning." Amen.

[runthegauntlet]

[Mr. Kalgukshi]

If you wish to discuss living and teaching in Korea, please do so on the Korean Job Forums that exist for such discussions.

Korean focused comments are not permitted here on the International Board and will be deleted per the Announcement at the top of this forum:

http://forums.eslcafe.com/job/viewtopic.php?t=54470

[Porlestone]

I can see where the OP is going with this. I can see what he is saying.

What he's saying is all these new requirements, the "crackdowns", regulations, stagnant or in some situations decreasing wages, and the power trips are tiresome and can be sickening (my words). As mentioned some countries require an array of hoops to be jumped through, other countries have deplorable wages, pretty much all of them only seem to be increasing their nationalist power grab.

To the brand new "newbie", or to the people over here in Asia that are mesmerized by their dreams of ideals, you may say that it's perfectly alright when a country decides to maximize it's expectations in order to select the "best." However, to most people who already have been on the ground for some time, you realize what is really going on. These countries, all of them except perhaps Japan, have a strong touch of 3rd world in them -- greed, corruption, bigotry, hypocrisy, racism, and "I do things my way." They apparently are continuing to grow in that direction. When Taiwan, HK, Korea or wherever requires drug checks, HIV checks, CRCs, degree notortizations, second health checks, college transcripts, and so on, you see it as a thinly veiled ploy that is really about cracking the whip, putting the foreigner in his "special place". That's because it really isn't anything more. At the same time, most of these countries are if anything growing worse.

As has been stated in this thread, freedom of speech in some of these countries on "certain" issues is a no go (China, for example). People are saying Thailand is growing more like Burma every month. We know who is in charge of no-Facebook Vietnam. Even in Cambodia there are new rumors of an internet crackdown where blogs and local expat websites are under threat.

I was last in Vietnam, and watching all their new visa / work permit requirements made me sick. Watching how bosses smiled with joy at the new regulations, proudly posting (and then reposting as the regs changed every few months) which they really saw as a way of getting you to hop too like a diligent little soldier. I saw teachers being threatened with losing their job. That country overall is a big mess and won't get cleaned up any time soon (i.e. the next 20 years), but you see how they are in a rush to iron out the foreigners.

I may not agree with every single point the op has made, and I may not be disagreeing with everything said in return, but we can see a lot of truth in this thread. Good points, keep them coming.

[razorhideki]

Ever notice that when you state in an OP that you're "not starting a flame war", some joker-runthegauntlet(ah, the SNL-type sarcasm I could create, but I digress ), in this case-wants to start one? I have to ask "runthegauntlet"(AKA TIUTA):"how long you be teaching in E. Asia, mate?"

I daresay I was teaching in E. Asia when you were collecting hockey/football/baseball cards, but hey, I digress.

I acknowledge the mod's point in noting that there was a Korean"angle" to my post but...as other posters have agreed & noted: the Korean situation is only a manifestation...maybe an extreme one...of the overall regression of the total downhill situation of EFL teaching in E. Asia. As such, it's relevant...nay, essential...to the discussion.

Porlestone: you seem to have a handle on the overall situation...mostly good points.

Runthe...(AKA TIUTA): You're obviously a PK. Right out of college. Telling ME what's acceptable for getting a visa/contract in Korea...or elsewhere?! Go ahead...start a thread on the Korean Forums about how "wrong" I am!

It's VERY expensive & time consuming to apply for a visa/contract in most of E. Asia these days...ROK being no exception....

Again(for the apologist set): in the ROK(and virtually every other E. Asian jurisdiction), there is NO requirement for local teachers to submit to CRCs, drug/HIV tests, etc. Why is it so for barbarians?

[runthegauntlet]