Korean Job Discussion Forums

[JohnML]

[PRagic]

Ah, I see now, and stand corrected on that salary. Yes, 5 million+ for TT jobs. But I still don't know anyone on TT teaching 20 hours a week, and that includes the people I know in education.

Like I said, though, if it IS a TT job, and if they wanted to get on the TT (understandable, as that starts your 'tenure clock'), then maybe someone would take it.

The problem with having a Ph.D. and NOT being on TT is that any experience you gain in a visiting or, even worse, adjunct job will not be counted toward your tenure. Weird rules, but rules they are.

You could have 5 years of full time, post Ph.D. teaching experience as a visiting prof, and THEN get a TT job, and you'd be at year one on the tenure clock. At most K universities, you need to do 4 years as a TT assistant prof, then 6 years as an associate before you go for full prof with tenure. Usually that final promotion is granted with tenure here (IF you pass muster), although some schools now will allow you to go for tenure at the associate prof level.

Some TT profs don't go for promotion as soon as they can, opting instead to just go for a contract extention until they're pretty sure they're going to get the promotion. In these cases, you still need enough publications to merit an extention, though there might not be enough to justify a promotion. It can get political.

An equally viable outcome would be that after a certain amount of time has passed, a prof will not be renewed if they simply don't have the publications, teaching record, and record of professional activity needed. If that happens at more than one university, it's often a career ender. At the very least, if it happens at one university, odds are you're going to have to make a move to a lower ranked university or even to a non R1 school.

Funny thing is, the biggest mistake people make when they go for a Ph.D. is thinking that everything will just take care of itself once the degree is in hand. In reality, at least if you want to be a working academic, that's the start of the race, and it gets tougher from there!

A completely irrelevant post, but I needed to take a break and write something not related to research lol...

[greyhound]

HI WHAT'S TT stand for? Tenured Track or something? I don't even know what tenured means. Something to do with being a professor though. So are the salaries as low as 2.5m for university posts? You may as well just teach at a hagwon in that case. I am going to be made head teacher apparently at my hagwon and I've only been there a week. So the salary should rise from 2.3m a few hundred thousand. If I can get 2.6m that will do me for the time being as it's £1750 a month. So you need a Masters in any subject to go for a uni position then do you?

[edwardcatflap]

[PRagic]

TT stands for 'Tenure Track'. Tenure is just a (semi) guarantee of employment. It basically says 'We want to keep you, and we we'll grant you enough academic freedom to research what you want and lecture how you want without worrying too much about being shown the door...unless you REALLY screw up!' Primary and secondary school teachers in the US also get 'tenured', sometimes too quickly according to many opinions.

At N. American universities, tenure is usually granted at the associate professor level. So a professor at a N. American R1 university (research intensive) could feasibly finish out their career as an associate professor, and some do. They 'can't' fire you, so you can just get by, that is if you're OK with never getting that big final promotion.

It's so competitive these days, and budgets are so stretched, that they're making promotion to full professor pretty tough. Same for Korean schools, although at K universities, tenure is usually only granted at the full professor level (the highest 'rank' so your last official promotion, and tenure is on the line at the same time, making it a very stressful promotion to navigate). In the end, you can be promoted to full professor with tenure in about the same amount of time here as you can in the N. American system.

Salaries for non-TT English instructors (not professors) at universities in Korea can be as low as 2.3m a month, even lower at terrible jobs truth be told. Probably 2.5-3.3 is about the average these days for 12-15 hours a week of teaching (and YES, GENO, we know that teachers have other responsibilities so, YES, you may work a bit more than 12-15 hours a week lol...you're freaking TEACHER!).

The difference is that many university positions afford fully paid winter AND summer breaks. Hagwons never do. Fully paid breaks would amount to 4 months a year of paid vacation (yes, you read that correctly) split between the summer and winter (it's actually a bit more, but most schools don't like you to leave right away and they like you back a week or two before the semester starts). Some of the less desireable gigs insist on some teaching over breaks though, although this may or may not be compensated separately. Depends on the school.

In general, the better the pay and conditions, the more exacting the requirements to get the job. A Master's in 'any subject' probably won't get you an interview for a better job anymore, let alone put you in the running. But if someone had the connections and a bucket of prior university teaching experience? Guess it could happen.

As I remarked in another thread, 'head teacher' positions are basically a big pain in the butt for a little compensation. You're there to handle the flack from other teachers, to help with scheduling, and to deliver bad news. Korean's don't do confrontation well, so it's basically a buffer position. You will get no extra 'respect' or 'prestige', and if you act like you should have it coming, you're going to be one sorry SOB lol...

[greyhound]

OK. And what kind of stuff do you teach at Uni? Do you use course books or do you have to make your own stuff? What English do you teach the uni students? If you say academic writing, what do you mean by that?

[PRagic]

If you don't know, there's probably no need to find out now....

[Fallacy]

[GENO123]

Generally speaking there are three types of situations if you work for a Korean university

A ) A name university where you have to work until you are sick , get pushed around and your life is miserable cause you are nothing but a servant. If you choose to work at one it is like being sick for 8 months of the year. You might get sick for real if you work for one. They don't really pay that much either.

OR

B ) A university where you don't earn much at all . This actually is an okay option IF you don't really need money or if you have an F visa and the University is non malicious and non Psychotic

OR

C ) Both A & B


You can avoid this IF you have a PHD and it is also true that working in Korea is better than Wall Mart but for those just getting out of college, but basically the in between between those two extremes in Korea is rapidly disappearing if it isn't already gone.

Yes you can pretty much write off teaching in Korea if you need a salary any greater that what is needed to support a single person unless one has a PHD.

“Ethics at Korean universities” Questionable. Korea university jobs especially the big famous schools are a sort of pyramid trick.



excellent post on the subject of university pay:

[PRagic]

....but Geno and company continually shrug off posts to the contrary from university teachers who like their U jobs, receive decent pay, enjoy bi-annual paid vacations, and experience little to no workplace pressure or prejudice.

Much as with satisfied hagwon or public school teachers, satisfied university teachers have little reason to come on the cafe to engage in bitch sessions, and the ones with good jobs surely don't need nor want to advertise their lot.

So in the end, you have teachers with an ax to grind banging on about how crappy 'all' university jobs are. Yes, people, we know that pay and conditions at HongIk have slid, and everyone knows that SNU cleaned house, what, 10 years ago? Drive on.

[GENO123]

[PRagic]

Well, then, it's all relative, isn't it. So what if they may (not confirmed) think 2.5-3.0 million/month is fair, or 'decent' or 'enough'. So what is some (definitely not all) are married and doing the DINK thing. So what if some are making as much, if not more, outside the university than at the university. So what if someone is married with a kid or two and making it work off of their university salary alone.

EVERY JOB has deductions, so EVERY JOB has lower 'take home pay'. Move on.

It's not up to you, or anyone else for that matter, to determine for the masses what are and are not passably good jobs, or, by extension, careers in terms of personal preferences. Sure, anyone can say job X seems better than job Y or job Z. But people take jobs for different reasons for different pay under different conditions at different points in their lives. If the jobs at the lower rungs of 'acceptibilty' are being taken, there's a reason and there's a supply. But that doesn't necessarily characterize all jobs.

You could work as a server at a roadside greasy spoon or you could work as a server at a 3 star M restaurant. Different skill sets and hugely divergent pay, but you'd be hard pressed to say that because the greasy spoon jobs exist, being a server is a low paying, terrible job and a dead end career path.

[GENO123]

[PRagic]

....so what...

[GENO123]