Job Discussion Forums

[brian-hopeful]

Anyone got experience with this place? I visited the campus in 98 or 99 and fell in live with the school. However Beijing and China have changed a lot since then (they also changed the translation of their name from "Beijing Institute of Language and Culture"). I noticed the salaries listed are lower than what I expect reading these forums... 3800-4000 as opposed to 5k-6k. That surprises me because they were quite a big deal back when I walked around campus.

Anyway...I'd love to work there even for crappy wages as long as it's still the cool place I remember and the conditions were good. The low wages make me worry that it has lost some of it's former glory and may have become just another English school instead of the center of Chinese language and culture.

Has anyone been there recently?

[rogerwilco]

Sometimes the more famous or popular schools will offer lower salaries.
Why ? Supply and demand. Maybe more people want to work there due to prestige, reputation, or location, and so the school can offer lower salaries and still receive many applicants.

Just try explaining to Chinese people about how many of the more prestigious schools offer lower salaries to foreigners and the Chinese will not believe you, but many times it is true.

I do not know anything about this school, so I do not know if this applies to this school or not.

[Guerciotti]

I don't know the place. I do know, or rather it is my opinion that many Beijing unis pay low salaries simply because they can. As you know, many foreigners want to work in Beijing. Supply, demand, market forces yadda yadda.

It may still be a cool place with glorious conditions, but low pay.

[therock]

You'll be penny pinching on that salary in Beijing.

[rogerwilco]

[The Great Wall of Whiner]

[rogerwilco]

[twilothunder]

Yeah, good luck living in Beijing on 4000 a month.

You can easily rip through 2000 in a weekend hanging around Sanliturr.

[MisterButtkins]

[twilothunder]

Used to do it fairly regularly

You can easily do 250 in a summer afternoon roof terrace drinking, then dinner 150, back out for about 5 more pints in Paddy's or somewhere, that's 200-300 again. That's not even going into a club, which I can't really be bothered with. Throw in two packets of cigarettes and your taxis and you're looking at another 100.

Add in Friday night and Sunday evening, and the rest of your meals and you are easily topping 1500. This isn't particularly crazy if you have a few decent groups of mates you circulate amongst, although I don't do it anymore. I've grown up a bit, learned how to cook and take care of myself a lot better now, but of course the temptation to do this will definitely be there for a new/recent arrival.

You'd be miserable for the rest of the month if that was half your salary gone.

[Brian Hugh]

I remember 10 years ago Beijing Da was offereing 10,000. I guess many people are believing the lie about how one can live well on a streetcleaners salary

[amemorylost]

Yeah, I'm currently in the process of turning down Beijing universities, as I'm lucky to have a good and comparably high-paying university on the border, and the salaries that the Haidian universities are offering is almost half (less than half if calculated annually as they don't pay for summer vacations).

The guy in charge of recruitment at Peking actually stated that the reason their salary is lower than my current job is because 'Our name will look good on your CV'.

[ymmv]

[MisterButtkins]

[ymmv]