Korean Job Discussion Forums

[stunari]

I am working at a small Korean university with 30 foreign teachers. The administration surprised us last week saying this:

The Ministry of Education is shutting down 100 universities in Korea over the next few years. Our university is on the verge of being shut down. Therefore, many smaller universities are changing their requirements for teachers to work at universities.

If you have a Master's Degree, you need one year of experience.
If you have a Bachelor's, you need three years experience.

Your degree and experience needs to be BEFORE you were hired at this university. If you don't fit these requirement, you will be fired.


Has anyone else teaching at universities heard this information? We are skeptical this all just a load of crap.

[Skippy]

Not a Uni teacher, but last year I heard of some universities having troubles because of bad management and other things. One uni I applied to was having a shake up. They actually hired none of the 30 or people interviewed. They started over. One reason for the do over was trying to satisfy the government and proper qualifications.

http://news.asiaone.com/News/Latest%2BNews/Asia/Story/A1Story20110907-298165.html

Some of the Universities had to crack down on the problems, including teachers and that.

As to requirements, well I would highly suspect it will not be an official regulation unless said university is public. The government can set some regulations up, when they foot some or all of the bill. Universities also can set up what ever requirements they want, too. Some religious ones will have religious qualifications.

Careful on what kind of qualifications for what kind of Visa, too. Maybe Universities/Government are tightening up the E-1 visa.

[djg11002323]

I am not sure if this is related, but as of this semester my uni only hired people with a MA and 2 years post MA university teaching experience. They claimed it is as a result of new MOE rules. They did not even interview applicants with bachelors degrees regardless of experience.

For current staff to remain, the stated requirement is: bachelors and four years uni experience or masters and two years experience. The current staff which met the stated requirements were said to be "grandfathered" in. As far as I can tell, all the private universities in my area also plan to fall in line as of spring semester 2013.

[PatrickGHBusan]

[denverdeath]

a lot of this is likely true, but it's the usual korean smoke and mirrors. many places have declining enrollment due to less births, bad economy, and the like. our place hasn't hired a new teacher in 2 yrs, and r likely not going to in the near future. having said that, i'm not going to start worrying until hours drop to the contractual 10, rather than the typical 14-16 weekly most of us still do. also, a lot of private unis/colleges get governmental funding, and r worried about rankings and the MOE, so it's not just a public thing. long story, short - unis r downsizing, so try to do ur best to keep ur job if u like it.

[nora]

Keep up with the news people.

The government has been weeding out the bad universities. ALL universities in Korea receive some sort of government funding. They realized that with some 70%+ of the population going to college, and only having a handful of decent colleges in the country, that something must be up.

Sure enough, some universities were terrible. The one story I recall was they imported all these Chinese students, but offered no support whatsoever. They did it simply to look international and bring in extra money. Another place was bringing in millions of dollars and keeping it for the family that ran the place. Long story short, the government told all unis to get their act together or face the chopping block, and then they cut off funding for a handful of places. They are going to do this yearly, cutting the ones that don't provide a quality education.

EVERYTHING gets measured. If you're at a solid school, they can get by with people with BAs and less experience IF they are making up the points elsewhere. If it's a lower school, then they need to get all the points they can - i.e., firing people with low qualifications, less experience.

Long story short, if you've got the experience, if you've got the MA, you're fine. If you don't, it's going to be a bit more difficult to get in with a Uni. It's a Catch-22 - the ones that COULD get away with hiring BAs probably don't do it anyway so you won't get experience, and the ones that can't hire a BA won't take you because you don't have the experience.

[Otherside]

Forgive me for being captain obvious here. Most of the universities under threat are 2nd (really 3rd tier) Universities out in the boonies. Looking at ads, these Universities offer around 2mill a month, with dormitory housing (or a housing allowance of like 200k). The only things they have going for them are the short hours and the long vacations. As alot of you know, more and more compulsory camps are being added to the vacations, so not as long as before. Many teachers (especially those with BA's) would take these jobs as a stepping stone to a better job.

Do you think that they will be able to get significant numbers of MA's to work for 2mill a month out in the middle of nowhere? The reason they hired BAs in the first place was because they couldn't get MAs.

Either way, it's a pretty moot point as I believe within the next 10 years or so, almost half the Universities (i.e. pretty much all the ones that hire teachers with BAs) will be forced to shut down.

Sure enough as others have mentioned, the declining birth rate is a big problem for all educational institutions. And that doesn't bode well for the long-term English industry as a whole. However, the declining birth-rate has still got a lot more biting to do with regards to Universities. In 1980 the Birthrate was 2.83, well above the accepted population replacement level of 2.2. In 1991 (approximate birthdate of current students) The birthrate had crashed to 1.78. The last decade or so, the birthrate has been floating between 1.08 and 1.25. Based on those numbers, one can assume that in 10 years from now, there will only be 40% of the students in University compared the last 10 years. That would imply only 40% of the teaching positions will be available too.

[Milwaukiedave]

The last university I worked at was on the lower end of the scale. They were up for re-certification for government funding and I believe were playing fast and loose with the numbers to make themselves look better.

My wife told me about this when it was first announced and I thought back to my experience there and it make sense now why they are cracking down so hard. It's not the teachers, but the universities themselves that have caused this.

[Swampfox10mm]

Edit

[Stan Rogers]

A great many of those Chinese international students never attended class and were working illegally in Korea. The student visa was just a ruse to get into the country to find work. This abuse was widespread and the schools knew about it.

[kberger]

I like out in an -eup in the sticks, and there is a university in town. I'm glad the uni is here, because without it, this town would be a bit depressing to live in.

Over the past year, there has been a ridiculous amount of construction. New apartment buildings near campus going up one after another, and also a big building for university classrooms or something. I imagine some uni have to be shut down someday, there just won't be enough students. I also imagine that all the money spent construction is a way of making it difficult to shut down a uni that just blew zillions of won on facilities.

I feel like rambling somewhat on topic.

Last winter, I heard the uni offered a Korean class. I was all excited and wanted to take it, but found out it was for six hours at a time for six straight Saturdays. I bet I would have been the only non-Chinese student in the class. I suspect it it would have been six hours of hanja to hangeul cramming, but I probably should have looked in to it a bit more.

More rambling, I go on some 20km jogs into the countryside. It is rare to find people out in the fields that are under the age of 60. This country is producing highly educated young people. I think they all go to the big cities and look for work. In another generation, I don't know who will be left to work the farms.

Being from the sticks of Wisconsin, somehow I had the idea that farming was pretty neat. Until I was a teenager, I actually wanted to be a farmer. I was surprised that when I told my students I once wanted to be a farmer, they started laughing.

Anyway, yes demographics will continue to make this teaching English gig more difficult.

[big_fella1]

I was told if the university has a language institute attached, they can hire anyone who can get an E2 visa. Some of the jobs will be exactly the same as working for a university others will be like hagwons (unigwons) and are best avoided.

Many universities want to employ people with an MA so they can count the person as a full time teacher which improves their teacher student ratio on evaluations.

One university in the boonies has 80 foreign teachers this year and 30 of them are Filipino.

We are much cheaper to employ than Korean "professors" but Filipino "professors" are paid even less.

If you have an MA and you're being offered 2.0 it had better be a 9 hour week over 2 days, no more than 2 office hours and full vacations, they had also better be open to the concept of providing permission to do extra work.

[eslwriter]

Here is a recent news story about how private unis are using school funds to build investment portfolios ... and taking losses. If I read it correctly, investments are okay but profits are supposed to be applied to school operating costs and reduce tuition.

I guess that last part hasn't worked out so well. For some people it seems that owning a private uni is like having an enormous personal cookie jar.

http://koreatimes.co.kr/www/news/nation/2012/09/117_120675.html

[Stan Rogers]

Another reason for the shutdowns is that now the government is evaluating universities and colleges based upon student employment levels for graduates. Many of these school's graduates can't find jobs, or won't take jobs that are available because it's not to their liking. Either way it makes the schools look bad at evalaution time.

The shutdowns are happening for a variety of reasons.

[Otherside]