Korean Job Discussion Forums

[crescent]

Here's why.....

1. Apartment: A newly constructed mini-pod 3meters x 3meters = living, dining, sleeping space. Small single window, no room for storage, no room for washing machine....see coin-op machine in common room. Small window high up on wall that opens to common hallway ensures you can keep up on the latest gossip walking by your pod. Imagine a year! Maintainance staff enter without permission or notification to check utilities. You probably wont have the rat problem that we do in the present facility though.

2. Location: Over 1 hour from Daegu, the town offers no movie theater, no variety outside of soju hofs, and little tolerance for westerners. It's true korean redneck country, complete with verbal harassment from drunk students, hostile glares, and poor service. Even the local video rental shop has little to offer.

3. Students: One of the lowest ranked uni's in korea will obviously attract the like in students. They are disrescpectful, unmotivated, and cluelesss. "Where is your textbook?" will get you a confused stare from most of them. You will have 33of them per class X 9classes. They are required to have a credit in english...they are not there because they want to be. 20% of their grade comes from just showing up...they assume they will pass just by being present. Since the grades are bell-curved, most of them do pass by doing nothing. They evaluate you twice a semester with a very subjective questionare. One question on it is translated as"Does your teacher look good?" If you act professionally in your classroom, you are penalized in your evaluation because they don't want to study. This evaluation plays a big role in your ranking against the other teachers, and will determine your bonus if you chose to sign for another year of punishment. If you are a new teacher at daegu u, you have the last choice of schedules, which guarantees an even tougher roster. The teachers who have been through it the previous semester, have left it for you. The students cheat, disobey instructions, and disrupt the class, and the administration choses to defend them rather than solve the problem. They complain if you are boring, if you kick them out of class, and if you don't hand feed them their lunch.

4. Management: The office staff is vindictive and uncooperative. They ignore requests to fix or maintain equipment in the teachers room such as the air conditioner, printers and audio equipment. Audio tapes are ordered too late for use when needed. Exam materials are ridden with mistakes. Tape players are barely audible to a class of 33. Poor communication ensures your needs are rarely met. They deduct points from your evaluation if you make too many photocopies or too many demands on their time. The assistant director is manipulative and favoritist. He realizes that helping you to succeed, jeopardizes his ranking against you at the end of the semester. I was repeatedly given poor advice as a new teacher, and others in my period of hire could say the same. He advocates serious teaching and discipline....yet he lets HIS students grade their own tests in class. When extra curricular employment arises, he awards to his personal favorites, regardless of ability. He exercises poor communication skills regarding the true requirements of employment. In the end, your duties far exceed that which is described.

5. Textbook: Redesigned by a personal favorite of the aforementioned asst.director. It is outdated in style and confusing in its layout. No other teachers were ever consulted in its production.

6. Co-workers: Most are older 35+, and married. Teachers are in competition with each other for ranking through the students' and professional evaluation. This ranking gives prioroty to the schedule choice for next semester as well as a resigning bonus. Most of the teachers learn how to manipulate the students and management for good evaluations...you will have to learn that part. Most are secretive about their activities and engage in heavy politics to become a favorite of the asst.director.

7. Extra duties: You are required to keep a written progress of each student for each day of class. This includes attendance, participation, quiz, assignment, and oral / written exam scores. In total you will have over 9000 written entries to a formal record book. You must even write the day of each and every class time in Hangul. These records must then be entered to computer files at the end of the semester. If you attempt to write them as you go, you will ineviteably be faced with endless corrections at the end of the semester, as the students come to you with authorized excuses. It takes days to complete this tedious work. The exams are proctored by you on saturdays (9am-5pm), and then all 275 are graded by you....and they are not multiple choice. In the end, the students' grades are bell curved, so all of your work accounts for nothing. Then there is a 4 day petition period at the end of the semester when you must be in your office to receive grading complaints from your students. You must also teach children for 2months of the year. They are just as poor as the regular ones, except these ones are usually friends or family of university staff. You must 'babysit' then for 6 hours a day for two months of the year. How grand!

There will be countless meeting throughout the year to address concerns put forth by the teaching staff...with no accountable outcome. Overall, this institution operates no different from a hagwan...except for the age of your students. This year has been a long and frustrating one. If you would like more precise info, you can PM me with your phone number and i will get back to you.

[kiwiboy_nz_99]

Suwon U was a little like that. What can you do but move on?

[Clutch Cargo]

[Mr. Kalgukshi]

Some people really need a job. The positions will be filled. Same old song.

[Real Reality]

crescent and kiwiboy_nz_99,

How do the Korean professors do their jobs?
1. Do the Korean professors have as many courses, students, and teaching hours? How many?
2. Do the Korean professors have the same challenges with the management? If not, why do they receive such cooperation from management?
3. Do the Korean professors have to enter the same data (attendance, grades, etc.) as the foreign professors?
4. Do the Korean professors receive the same number and kind of evaluations?

Quality of Korean Education Environment
The quality of the learning environment and contents of instruction in Korea ranked very low, although the numbers of college admissions (including two-year colleges) and university graduates stand at the top in the world.
http://english.donga.com/srv/service.php3?biid=2001042497798

The foreign professor -- colleague or hired hand?
Foreign professors do most of the heavy lifting in terms of course loads, devoting themselves almost exclusively to teaching. Nevertheless, they tend to be treated as hired hands. They are compensated at a rate only 60 percent of their Korean peers.
http://joongangdaily.joins.com/200206/14/200206142349223599900090109011.html

[The Lemon]

[Mr. Kalgukshi]

[Real Reality]

Where did the professors earn their PhDs?

Some professors at national universities, including Seoul National University, violated rules of appointment when evaluating professor candidates by giving more credits to those who went to the same schools as theirs. A university in a local area included unofficial reports or results of studies kept by businesses or individuals to give more credits, and even decided to hire a candidate who did not have a degree only to cancel the appointment later. The Ministry of Education and Human Resources Development (MOEHRD) said that it nullified the appointment of two professors and suspended two others at a national university in a local area. It also issued warnings to 48 professors and citations to 50 professors.

"The practice of hiring professors based on senior-junior or mentor-prot�g� relationships has long been prevailing in universities," said an official at MOEHRD.
http://english.donga.com/srv/service.php3?bicode=040000&biid=2003071626978

How did they prepare their thesis, dissertation, or article?
A professor of engineering said it was common for there to be up to ten co-authors on a paper, most of whom have had nothing to do with it.
http://www.chosun.com/w21data/html/news/200204/200204251020.html

Money Key to Teaching Posts
Nearly one in five said colleges refused to offer them a position if they did not make a donation to the school foundation or development fund. Private universities were reportedly more likely to demand money than public colleges. More than 100 of the respondents said school officials demanded outright bribes from them. Nearly 8 out of 10 respondents said the recruitment process was meaningless because many of the colleges had already decided who they would hire. Almost two-thirds said the recruitment process centered on regional or school connections.
http://joongangdaily.joins.com/200207/09/200207090054252629900090409041.html

Educators said to pay big bribes for appointment to choice
http://joongangdaily.joins.com/200307/08/200307080005054309900090409041.html

Transparency International's "Corruption Perceptions Index 2003" lists Korea 10 places lower than what it was last year, meaning the country ranked 50th. It means that in this new government in which civil servants are given lectures about reform and ministers in tune with the government's politics throw their work aside and run around the country, the corruption has gotten that much worse.
http://english.chosun.com/w21data/html/news/200310/200310080034.html

[Kwangjuchicken]

[some waygug-in]

I guess Mexico wasn't so bad after all. At least there, everyone knew that these were the living conditions, like it or lump it.

My hagwan job doesn't seem so bad either, in comparison. At least I had my own place, fairly decent.

Cheers

[J.B. Clamence]

[Real Reality]

Are there non-Koreans in the world that could qualify for tenured (or tenure-track) positions in Korea? How many foreigners have tenure in Korea? There are so many tenure-track positions offered to foreigners, right? How many can you count on Dave's Korean Job Board?

According to the Samsung Group's chairman, Lee Kun-hee, to succeed globally, Korea must forgo the thought that Korea and being Korean is superior, and foreign specialists must be treated with respect. If Korean companies follow this standard, Korea's institutions of higher learning cannot afford to do less.
http://joongangdaily.joins.com/200206/14/200206142349223599900090109011.html

Also consider what Joo Rip Gwa Rhhee wrote:

I know 2 foreigners w/PhD�s who work at Korean universities while they have it better than the regular foreigners who teach at universities but they don't have it nearly as good as what the Korean professors have.

Anyway this is off topic but from what I have seen most of Korean professors in particular the ones in the humanities departments (even at prestigious schools) are truly over rated academic lightweights who usually get other people to do their research for them. Anyone here ever gotten an email from a Korean English professor? And to think these people are getting paid 5 or 6 million a month.

Are foreign teachers at Korean universities underpaid? Maybe.
Are the Korean professors overpaid? Definitely.
http://www.eslcafe.com/forums/korea/viewtopic.php?t=12221&postdays=0&postorder=asc&start=15

Weatherman wrote,
There is a PhD teaching at my school. Gets treaded the same as the B.A. holders too.

[J.B. Clamence]

[Real Reality]

J.B. Clamence wrote,
As far as bonafide foreign professors of English, I don't know any in Korea, nor do I know of any who tried to get tenure in Korea and failed. I wouldn't imagine that such highly qualified people would be lining up to come to Korea.

Why aren't they lining up to come to Korea?

Korea must forgo the thought that Korea and being Korean is superior, and foreign specialists must be treated with respect. If Korean companies follow this standard, Korea's institutions of higher learning cannot afford to do less.
http://joongangdaily.joins.com/200206/14/200206142349223599900090109011.html

[J.B. Clamence]