|
Korean Job Discussion Forums
"The Internet's Meeting Place for ESL/EFL Teachers from Around the World!"
|
| View previous topic :: View next topic |
| Author |
Message |
Weigookin74
Joined: 26 Oct 2009
|
 Posted: Mon Dec 16, 2013 9:19 pm Post subject: |
 |
|
| grant gerstners wrote: |
I presume, here to invoke a broader perspective on the forces at work in the region (not just in Korea). But I'm just guessing.
I sometimes wonder if the cuts in Korea are partly a manipulation aimed at getting westerners more focused on teaching in Japan, and perhaps other regions.
In anticipation of the Olympics in Japan in 2020, there is supposedly a desire to get more of the Japanese to be able to speak English. They want to start getting ready for that now. Some of you/us might well end up in Japan. I gather things are better in Japan, long-term, although I hear the start-up costs and cost of living are higher.
[But the reimbursed airfare and free apartments in Korea were all just to facilitate getting a bunch of us all acquainted with how the reality of working abroad can work. Now we know how to do it. Enough of you/us are now equipped to do it somewhere else.]
In addition, the hoped for "economic integration" of southeast Asian nations (google: ASEAN) in 2015 will likely include an eventual push for more English education in those nations. |
I'm guessing if you can keep all your money in Japan assuming you get the 250,000 yen salary and are willing to have another two or three thousand dollars to spend on top of that or maybe to accumulate on your cards in debt, you can go to japan just to experience the place and travel around a bit. |
|
| Back to top |
|
 |
World Traveler
Joined: 29 May 2009
|
|
| Back to top |
|
|
Weigookin74
Joined: 26 Oct 2009
|
| Posted: Tue Dec 17, 2013 5:50 am Post subject: |
|
|
That may be the average. But, America is a big country. I knew of some working for several years making in the mid 30's range per year. Mid west states. I do realize a New York City teacher makes over 100 K a year. So, it probably skews the average. Teachers here make in that range listed towards the end of their careers. Maybe late 40's until retirement. |
|
| Back to top |
|
|
World Traveler
Joined: 29 May 2009
|
| Posted: Fri Dec 20, 2013 1:11 am Post subject: |
|
|
People should move to the best paying areas then (assuming they have nothing tying them to one particular place, which many do). In the U.S. overall, wages are good.
| Quote: |
| US Average Hourly Earnings is at a current level of $24.15, up from $24.11 last month. |
Most of those workers don't even have a college degree. If you do, you could make more than that. |
|
| Back to top |
|
|
Malislamusrex
Joined: 01 Feb 2010
|
| Posted: Fri Dec 20, 2013 4:47 pm Post subject: |
|
|
| All the matrices used in the Korean salary equations are PPP. PPP doesn't say anything about the real pay of Korean teachers. All PPP explains is that goods are generally cheaper in South Korea compared to other countries and per head the GDP is higher in relative terms. Moreover, the PPP salary estimate does not include house prices. If house prices were included the PPP salary level of Korean teachers would be much lower. |
|
| Back to top |
|
|
World Traveler
Joined: 29 May 2009
|
| Posted: Fri Dec 20, 2013 9:12 pm Post subject: |
|
|
Teaching in the U.S. is probably the best deal. It pays the highest with the highest benefits. There are more days not working (185) than working (180) per year. (More if you count sick days and personal days (which if unused can be traded for money).) Teaching in Korea pays peanuts compared to teaching in the U.S.
One note of caution though is to avoid teaching in low income ghetto areas. The U.S. government gives welfare money to deadbeat parents, which sadly causes them to reproduce in greater numbers. Those people should not be having kids, but they do, and a lot of them. It's one reason part of the U.S. is screwed up. But not every place is like that. In fact, most are not. Most have civilized students who care about their grade (and as a result try hard in school and behave respectfully). |
|
| Back to top |
|
|
Weigookin74
Joined: 26 Oct 2009
|
| Posted: Sat Dec 21, 2013 2:07 am Post subject: |
|
|
| World Traveler wrote: |
Teaching in the U.S. is probably the best deal. It pays the highest with the highest benefits. There are more days not working (185) than working (180) per year. (More if you count sick days and personal days (which if unused can be traded for money).) Teaching in Korea pays peanuts compared to teaching in the U.S.
One note of caution though is to avoid teaching in low income ghetto areas. The U.S. government gives welfare money to deadbeat parents, which sadly causes them to reproduce in greater numbers. Those people should not be having kids, but they do, and a lot of them. It's one reason part of the U.S. is screwed up. But not every place is like that. In fact, most are not. Most have civilized students who care about their grade (and as a result try hard in school and behave respectfully). |
In Canada, you can do that too. I could have moved in with some fat chick and got her to start popping out kids to get a bigger welfare check and keep the money coming in. I'm sure half my former classmates are probably living this way today. But, I wanted to do something with my life and got frustrated with the bad economy produced in Eastern Canada by it's socialist job killing mentality. (Well, that, and I don't like fat chicks.) So, I eventually hopped a plane and decided to pay things off, even if I'm old by the time it's done. |
|
| Back to top |
|
|
earthquakez
Joined: 10 Nov 2010
|
| Posted: Sat Dec 21, 2013 6:59 am Post subject: |
|
|
| grant gerstners wrote: |
I presume, here to invoke a broader perspective on the forces at work in the region (not just in Korea). But I'm just guessing.
I sometimes wonder if the cuts in Korea are partly a manipulation aimed at getting westerners more focused on teaching in Japan, and perhaps other regions.
In anticipation of the Olympics in Japan in 2020, there is supposedly a desire to get more of the Japanese to be able to speak English. They want to start getting ready for that now. Some of you/us might well end up in Japan. I gather things are better in Japan, long-term, although I hear the start-up costs and cost of living are higher.
[But the reimbursed airfare and free apartments in Korea were all just to facilitate getting a bunch of us all acquainted with how the reality of working abroad can work. Now we know how to do it. Enough of you/us are now equipped to do it somewhere else.]
In addition, the hoped for "economic integration" of southeast Asian nations (google: ASEAN) in 2015 will likely include an eventual push for more English education in those nations. |
Not being negative for its sake but the English teaching job opps in Japan stink more and more each year. That is a market that had its heyday before the 21st century. I was there after the Bubble and just before the trend towards part time jobs, and saw the English gigs getting worse and worse.
Then came the fall of Nova and the other eikaiwa big chain schools. I had left before that but I still know gaijin in Japan. The time to get out of Engrish teaching has passed for most - if you could do something else before 2006 or so then you were fine.
Now there is sweet f all for most Engrish teachers who want to do something else with their 3 yr Specialist in Humanities visa. I still somewhat regret not trying to get a job in a publishing company around 2004 when it would have been a viable alternative if I had looked hard.
The situation in Japan is fairly dire for people who have never worked there before and even for those who have. The big employers of Engrish teachers have been replaced by small or relatively small sized eikaiwas (English conversation schools). A vacation out of Shanghai where I live and work now showed me how bleak the Japanese job market is for foreign English teachers.
Smaller English schools does not equal better. I've heard firsthand from friends and acquaintances how rotten many of the employers are, and how personal in the wrong sense of the word it gets working in such a school. The small bonuses that used to exist for contract completion have nearly all gone, there is no such thing as any airfare payment and the smaller eikaiwa Japanese owners seem to have more than their fair share of exploiters among them not to mention the oddball gaijin staff.
I talked to somebody recently who works in a far from desirable location in a far from desirable school. They are the kind of English teacher I would expect to have a business English teaching or university job, instead they are stuck teaching children in a school where the weird boss rules everything with an iron fist and an obsessive attention to every minor detail which then become major.
To make it worse his co-workers are odd, too. I know him, he's very pleasant and easy to get along with. He has run up against the 'married to a Japanese, here for life and resenting it while not wanting to go home' foreign English teacher. He says the people he works with and his J boss are surly and rude when he tries to communicate something other than what time is so and so's makeup class.
It is normalcy bias of the worst kind. Rude fellow gaijin who ignore him, won't even say hello most of the time in return when he goes into the very small working spaces at his school, and a J boss who is always biyotching about something and getting the J secretary to deliver the complaints. To make it worse, I heard very similar stories from others working in smaller sized eikaiwa.
As a veteran of Japan (and Korea) I believe what I have heard about Japan now. As far as more English for the Olympics - not being rude, forget about it. The trend in Japan is very much AWAY from English education, many Japanese are saying there is no need to learn English and among them are people who don't have the nationalistic axe to grind that is becoming more common these days in Japan.
If you didn't establish yourself in Japan before now, you won't in the future. You can marry one of the locals and that will be better but even that doesn't guarantee better employment. Sure the nasty gaijin who I mentione and are married to J women are losers who never used their better visas to do something else but even if you get married to a J national and try to use that as a springboard to a non teaching job, it is much harder than it was once.
Give Japan a miss unless there is a solid guarantee of a genuinely good job - and that is rare. You'll find the costs of even trying to find housing etc highly stressful w/out an employer to act as a guarantor. Even with a job you will still pay nonsensical deposits that are not refunded and believe me I was paying them in Japan some time ago. Working in Korea sucks in key ways but I actually think it is a better option to try and find work there. |
|
| Back to top |
|
|
earthquakez
Joined: 10 Nov 2010
|
| Posted: Sat Dec 21, 2013 7:18 am Post subject: |
|
|
| Brooks wrote: |
No way. Korea must be better. The market here must be even more flooded than Korea.
I work in Tokyo and my contract ends in March.
I have gotten zero interviews at all for next year.
At this point I may head back to the US in the spring, doing Teach for America.
In Japan teachers are mostly either overqualified (with presentations, articles, books, etc.) or fresh off the boat with youth and no experience.
Anyway, I would say Korea is doing a better job than Japan at teaching English. In Japan, the cuts to teachers in JET previously was just a way to save money.
At least the Education Ministry ordered high school teachers to teach classes in English and stop using Japanese.
Korea seems to follow Japan. The birth rate is low and schools will close. It is only a matter of time. Schools have lowered their standards and let in anyone.
I get a bit over 50,000 US in Tokyo. Can I do that in Korea? I assume not.
Japan is expensive but I tell you, I was in Korea in 1998 and it has gotten a lot more expensive since then, but the Tokyo area is an expensive place to live in. The key money is a lot. If you lose your job you may have to move to be near the next one, then pay more key money to a new landlord. |
Brooks - I recall you from the Japan job discussion board when I had a login there under another name during my time in Japan. I was rather surprised to hear firsthand from people I know working in Japan as Engrish teachers nowadays about how rotten the employment situation has got. See my post above.
I meant to say in that post above that while I consider Korean children and teenagers to be the rudest and most disrespectful students I have taught, according to my Japan contacts that kind of behaviour is becoming more noticeable at eikaiwa.
Having heard about the dismal demographics nowadays and having seen some places where old people have a very big presence now, I think the increasingly ruder manners of Japanese children is down to Japanese parents now erring on the side of indulgence and the increasing number of 1 child families.
One of my friends teaches a lot of only children and he remarked how narcissistic and arrogant most of them are. Everything is about them. I recall when I worked in Japan some time ago, I didn't have any significant problems with Japanese children or teenagers but some of the things I heard recently tell me that the demographics are playing some role in worsening behaviour patterns of Japanese children and teenagers. |
|
| Back to top |
|
|
World Traveler
Joined: 29 May 2009
|
| Posted: Sat Dec 21, 2013 1:59 pm Post subject: |
|
|
| The ESL market in Japan is on the decline (and has been for quite some time). The ESL market in Korea is on the decline (and has been for quite some time). The ESL market as a whole (in terms of pay and conditions (and even behavior of students)) is on the decline (and has been for quite some time). Sad. |
|
| Back to top |
|
|
|
|
You cannot post new topics in this forum
You cannot reply to topics in this forum
You cannot edit your posts in this forum
You cannot delete your posts in this forum
You cannot vote in polls in this forum
|
|
FAQ
Search
Memberlist
Usergroups
Register
Profile
Log in to check your private messages
Log in
