Korean Job Discussion Forums

[mysteriousdeltarays]

I'm back and I am an a bad mood! Those bogus degrees! What can I saY?

[Squaffy]

[Euroboy]

i have a very good friend here who has taught for 5 years around the world on a TEFL qualification and nothing else (including here before the law changed a year or so ago)............and now they are here with a fake BA.

now that experience is priceless, as is the tefl training..........why hamstring these people just coz the koreans have no idea what a good teacher is?
a BA is worth nothing in the practical aspect of teaching.......and anyone who thinks a university education and a lifetime of speaking english makes them a good teacher is an idiot.

personally i think a tefl qualification is worth much more than a degree (and no i don't have a tefl either.....yet)

makes me laugh, all these self-righteous pc room soap boxers!

ps there's someone openly selling tefls on tefl.net at the moment (for $100)........personally i find that more disturbing than faking a degree......i did my degree fair & square and it hasn't help me one bit in teaching!!

[Anda]

Degrees what false bits of paper. They prove only a couple of things at most and then that can even be questioned. I have my bits of paper that I had to pay out heaps for a mix of so,so material and very limited access time to University teacing staff.

Degrees show that you have some skill in presenting an idea on paper and remembering what has been presented to you on a given subject.

Anybody who thinks that that makes a good English teacher needs their head read. Some of the most boring people I've met have university degrees. Ability should be what counts and it did in the old days but now we have false standards to go by.

If I found out that my co-worker had a false degee then I wouldn't care less provided they were doing their best to teach.

I might yet go back to Uni to do a masters but that is just to have the peace of mind of being able to use the real thing to get a better position; not to get more so called education.

[Emma Clare]

Huntesl.com do the 'INTESOL' TESOL cert for around �360. This is accredited by 'The College of Teachers', which is under Royal charter and also ACDECT.

Or, you can try the London Teacher Training College. Their Diploma in TESOL is around �260 and also externally accredited. They also do a TEFL course. Anything under 120 hours isn't really recommended though....

Can't do the Trinity TESOL online unfortunately, as it's residential only, yet still the most widely recognised and esteemed. Boo hiss!


Quick addendum. I'm a whizz in Photoshop (Used to do graphic design)
Faking a 120 hour TEFL/TESOL certificate is naughty, but just about acceptable. Don't they background check all of your qualifications though?! I'd be a bit worried about getting caught out!

As for faking degrees....that is totally unacceptable. I'd feel a COMPLETE FRAUD walking around with a fake BA/BSc. (With reference to my comment above this might seem a little hypocritical, I appreciate!) How can it be right for someone to PRETEND to have worked and studied for 3 or 4 years knowing full well they haven't done a thing (usually because they're too damned lazy, or too thick, or both) when their colleagues have worked their butts off (not to mention suffered a lot of financial hardship in many cases) to get theirs. Grrrr....

[The Lemon]

[Homer]

This should not even be an issue.
A degree DOES mean something Anda. It is more than just a piece of paper. I means the person who has it was willing to put in the work to get it.
Made the sacrifices and has completed a university degree. What does this prove? It proves the person is able to work in a certain way and has a certain educational background.
Does it make that person inherently better than one with no degree? Of course not. Does it make for a better teacher? Not automatically.
But, a degree signifies that at least that person finished a degree. They (the work market) don't ask for degree's for no reason. Its a way for them to insure the candidates they choose have a certain educational background.
Fake degree's just say a lot about a person's integrity and sense of responsibility. They are a cheap (not money wise) cop out and shortcut. A person getting a job with such a piece of trash is an insult to those that have a genuine degree.

As for teaching, well being a good teacher goes beyond the degree of course. But, again, schools here in Korea and back home hire people with degree's for a reason. You can always get a bad teacher with a degree. But I find that the degree is a good way to insure the basic, minimum requirements are met for a potential teacher.

[TheUrbanMyth]

[Emma Clare]

[Squaffy]

[Bulsajo]

[happydove88]

After reading all the replies about fake degrees and having never been to korea , my question is: How do teachers with fake degrees get the certified by the embassies in their home countries? Or do they work illegally with them?

[On the other hand]

Many of the posters on this thread seem to be conflating two issues, which leads to some confusion. The two issues are:

1. Should the Korean government make holding a University degree a requirement to teach English?

2. Do people have the right to teach without the proper requirements?

Believe it or not, these are entirely separate questions. I personally think that the voting age should be lowered to 16. And, I have, at various times, advanced what I consider to be fairly rational arguments against the current voting age of 18. But, if I were to assist a 16 year old in fraudulently casting a ballot on election day, I would be treated as the common criminal I had become, and given a fine or thrown in jail. By the same token, you have every right to oppose the Korean government's educational laws; picket their embassies, write letters to the HERALD if you feel that strongly about it. But, when you cross the line from critiquing those laws to BREAKING them, you become a common criminal, and the
Korean courts have every right to punish you in whatever way they see fit. I really don't see how there can be much debate around this topic. Pretty open-and-shut, I'd say.

[TheUrbanMyth]

[Wombat]

Educational elitism seems to have reached plague proportions on this one. I want no part of it.

Wombat