Job Discussion Forums

[spellbound]

I just want to give a heads up to teachers considering working at Abu Dhabi University: don't!


I recommend strongly against working for this organization on their English Language Program in either their Abu Dhabi or Al Ain Campus.

There are several reasons:

1. They do not pay people on time or in full.
2. Their "management" do not communicate properly with the staff.
3. On a weekly basis they have threatened to withold the pay of teachers.
4. They have moved teachers four times in 3 months from one accommodation to another.
5. The list could go on. Other people there will be happy to tell you more.

If you decide to join in October/November 2007, get ready for a whole world of pain, because, to begin with, so many people are quitting and all the work will be dumped on you.

They have recently announced a pay cut for future contracts. It is only likely to get worse. There are other places in the country where you can do similar work. I suggest going to those.

On the plus side, the students are quite nice people.

[veiledsentiments]

So. nothing has improved. Anyone considering a job there should do a search because the history of ADU is enough to keep anyone away.

Are they still offering those 3,6, or 9 month contracts? That is a dead giveaway as to their problems when all respectable universities in the UAE give full benefit 3 year contracts.

VS

[kiefer]

Curious that the students are nice.

Don't they ever seem languid or express disappointment over an inability to develop a rapport with their ephemeral faculty?

[eha]

'Don't they ever seem languid or express disappointment over an inability to develop a rapport with their ephemeral faculty?'

Couldn't they do those things and still be 'nice'?

[kiefer]

Let me rephrase the question.
I gather from ADU postings on this forum that teachers are constantly a'comin' and a'goin' at the place.

If this is indeed the case, do these nice students appear to be OK with coming to class on any given particular day to find that a new teacher, Mr. Z, has replaced Mrs. Y, who only a short time back was Miss X's replacement?

If the students have no complaints about this flux , then that says a lot to me about the students' and managements' concern with consistency in academic standards, let alone teachers' welfare.

That's fluxed up.

[spellbound]

The latest is that the management do not want people to communicate their troubles with each other by CCing e-mails. They believe that doing so is an attempt to create anger and trouble.

This is meant to be a university, the one place where freedom of speech should be sacred. Instead they want to gag people.

There is no trust between the teachers and management. For example, if you get a remote control for an air-con you have to sign for it.

We all expect them to foul up the next pay.

The contracts available are two monthly ones at a reduced rate of pay. They told us it absolutely was not a pay cut. Really it went down from $3500 to $2750. That 'contract' is meant to be illegal, by the way - you would be working without a work visa.

The other contract is for 1 year. They say that they will hold you liable for expensesif you quit ahead of your contract.

This place sucks. It makes me upset just writing about it

Then there was the smug e-mail we all got from senior management.

I really hope that nobody else joins them.

Look elsewhere. I am going to quit.

To all the teachers still there, you are great, I wish you the best looking for a better job!

[spellbound]

About the teacher turnover, the students don't like it. They complain like crazy. You often see them wandering around the corridors because they have no teacher. Sometimes they are left like that for days!

[kiefer]

So help me get my head around this situation:
If the customers are not happy with this lack of an essential service--having a teacher to teach them, then:
A. If they complain like crazy, why aren't their complaints providing the teachers with some leverage to have their grievances resolved? Student complaints about teachers at these GCC schools of higher earnings generally result in summary terminations. Complaints of this nature do not fall on deaf ears.
B. Are the students' parents paying out-of-pocket or are they receiving "scholarships" (which would make sense--not wanting to look a gift horse in the mouth and all that)?

As for

[MissMao]

The students are supposed to be paid for their attendance. It's a government initiative to get unemployed Emiratis in the workforce.

Sadly, I think the management is dealing with complaints from all ends. Unless a teacher does something extremely treacherous in the classroom ADU is desperate enough for teachers that most will be recontracted if they wish to be.

[veiledsentiments]

In other words, the good teachers/managers will move on to better things as quickly as they can, and the generally unemployable elsewhere will stay.

Once this pattern gets set, it is very hard to change it without new top management changing.

VS

[eha]

"I may disagree with what you have to say, but I'll give my life for your right to say it."

In this region, this bathetic platitude would be seen as naive, at best, a capital crime at worst.

'Bathetic platitude'? Poor old Voltaire must be rolling in his grave! Just because so many people reduce principles to rhetoric, doesn't reduce the validity of the principle.
A university as a home for free speech? Maybe once upon a time... but modern universities appear to be all about interdepartmental politics --- and worse. Try speaking up about something that rattles administrative cages either in the West or the East, and you soon find out how much integrity you're surrounded by. And who your friends are.

[kiefer]

Why would poor old Voltaire be rolling over in his grave? The sentiment has long been falsely attributed to him. The author is Evelyn Beatrice Hall under the pseudonym Stephen G. Tallentyre, 1906.

Have to agree with you on the limits of free speech in modern language and English departments.

Define non-existent:
Humor in a Women's Studies Program.

[eha]

Kiefer: thanks for putting me right about the Voltaire quote. I've spent my whole life thinking he said it. But apparently Evelyn Beatrice Hall used her own words to sum up Voltaire's stance on a contemporary controversy. The spirit sounds quite valid to me--- but then I love a fine phrase.

Isn't the Internet wonderful?

As for the free speech thing... you know, I have a feeling that the absence of it in the academic workplace isn't so much political as (at least in the Middle East) the result of apathy and the total absence of any form of solidarity among the 'teams' who form the workforce there. Is it just my impression, or are academics in general petty and vindictive beyond belief?

[kiefer]

eha,
as the post begins to veer off from the original topic, we can run parallel with the original OP as I am sure ADU is not only a toxic work environment due to friction between management and faculty, but that it is also made less pleasant by the faculty members who know the key to survival is to form an alliance with management at the expense of new faculty or faculty who simply want to be left alone and not have to constantly queston the motives of overtures of friendship--you find this kind of environment in much of the Gulf. I have taught elsewhere and yes, this phenomenon exists even back on US campuses, but to a far lesser degree.

I recently resigned from a position for several reasons both personal and professional. I'll keep the personal reasons to myself, but I will say that one of the top tiered reasons for leaving the job for professional reasons was the autocratic, despotic way the so called teams were run.

Good teachers are creative by nature, and they have to be able to think quickly on their feet to make adjustments for classrooms that take on different personalities. To disallow a teacher a measure of creative, independent decision making or approval to make independent calls on an as needed basis or to have team leaders or management constantly hold suggestions in abeyance instills resentment and breeds a lack of cooperation among teams. Micromanagement is an abomnination.

Now--here I go, way out on a limb to make a cultural observation which I admit is a bias formed by many years in this region.

Information in the Arab world is as much a commodity as bread or gold. And I don't care how much western education or how "western thinking" the Arab colleague. Information can be hoarded and dispensed in dribs and drabs depending upon what the information knower determines is in his or her best interest to leak out-not what is good for the team or committee. It's an oxymoron: Freedom of information in the Arab world, and this applies as much in education as anywhere else.

IMHO, these are some of the things that result in "apathy and the total absence of any form of solidarity"

And I am sure ADU is an extreme example.

[veiledsentiments]

Bump for the person looking for ADU info.

VS