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Korean Job Discussion Forums
"The Internet's Meeting Place for ESL/EFL Teachers from Around the World!"
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| Is it ok to use a fake degree to gain employment here? |
| Sure, hell I have a fake degree myself! |
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4% |
[ 6 ] |
| Yeah, why not? |
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4% |
[ 6 ] |
| No, that is illegal and wrong. |
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69% |
[ 86 ] |
| I truly dont care one way or the other. |
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20% |
[ 26 ] |
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| Total Votes : 124 |
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KumaraKitty
Joined: 09 Jan 2006
Location: Bucheon
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 Posted: Thu Jan 12, 2006 6:24 pm Post subject: |
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Interesting..I knew a girl last year in Korea who taught ILLEGALLY on her H-1 Visa. She had many friends(with and without degrees) teaching here as well. She personally had a degree, but was not using an E-2 Visa to teach.
How did she get her job? Through a gentleman named "Ben", at Footprints Recruiting. |
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mithridates
Joined: 03 Mar 2003
Location: President's office, Korean Space Agency
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| Posted: Thu Jan 12, 2006 7:42 pm Post subject: |
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| KumaraKitty wrote: |
Interesting..I knew a girl last year in Korea who taught ILLEGALLY on her H-1 Visa. She had many friends(with and without degrees) teaching here as well. She personally had a degree, but was not using an E-2 Visa to teach.
How did she get her job? Through a gentleman named "Ben", at Footprints Recruiting. |
That's simply shocking! 
A person with an H-1 visa in Korea! |
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chronicpride
Joined: 16 Jan 2003
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| Posted: Thu Jan 12, 2006 9:50 pm Post subject: |
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| Ben Glickman wrote: |
That being said, I am not saying that teachers without degrees cannot be good teachers, I am saying based on our internal statistics, teachers with degrees have fared better than those that don't have degrees. You can draw your own conclusions- there is of course room for excpetions to the norm. However, as has been discussed before, whether individuals without degrees can be good teachers in Korea is a moot point- since by teaching with unaccredited degrees individuals put themselves, their schools and any third party representing at risk. I don't have the link handy - but there was an article in the Globe and Mail a few months ago regarding 50 Canadian teachers who were detained and deported from South Korea- all of whom were teaching illegally in some capacity- some of whom had fake degrees. |
Ben, you're forgeting that you're not the only recruiter or ex-recruiter on this board, lending your perspective. And we did pretty good monthly volume in the Gyeongnam and Gyeongbuk provinces, as well as some placements in Taiwan. And I say that you are handing this board a load of glossy BS, in hopes to help your image when newbs search for Footprints on these forums.
I'll be candid. Teachers need to know that contrary to whatever line a recruiter gives them, recruiting is strictly a commodity business, with teachers being dealt as quickly and coldly as cattle is dealt on the Chicago Mercantile Exchange. We stopped recruiting, because we decided to hunker down and build towards making a better information portal with job ads, which would stand to make a better difference in the lives of the people who work in this industry, while at the same time make comparable revenue and significantly less lying, and teacher and school hand-holding, than recruiters have to do. I also couldn't reduce myself to having to work with the ridiculous hiring discrimination practices that this industry has and that EVERY recruiter has to compromise themselves to try to work with or they will not have a business. And don't even try to pretend that you don't dance to the tune that schools set.
Because I no longer have a recruiting rep to uphold and blow smoke up asses, I'll be frank. If you're a North Ameican, blond, 24 year old, sweet young thing with fake degree, then congrats. Not only are you getting yourself an E2 job, but the recruiter is even going to jack up his fee for you because you are a more sought after commodity.
Also, I've cleaned up messes in where Ben's ex-teachers have ran, because they just couldn't hack it. Not just Ben, but it happens with everyone placing teachers here. I've seen enough runners who had legit degrees who kept complaining that this place is not like home and they eventually cracked and left in the middle of night.
Ben is used to talking his stuff to newbs on emails who are learning about Korea and its ESL industry for the first time, so you'll have to forgive him when he steps into an environment with people who have walked in his shoes and he forgets to check the glossy PR at the door. |
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Captain Corea
Joined: 28 Feb 2005
Location: Seoul
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| Posted: Thu Jan 12, 2006 10:44 pm Post subject: |
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| Ben Glickman wrote: |
| If you check out the Peace Corps website one of the first questions asked is about post-secondary education. I doubt they would ask this unless they felt this was strongly predictive of applicant's future job performance. |
Do you beleive that every question they ask is relevant to future job performace?
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| It may be a bit of an apples to oranges comparison, but looking at the teachers we have placed in China- a greater percentage of teachers we have placed in China with four year degrees have completed contracts and experienced less problems than teachers that we have placed in China that do not have four year degrees- even within the direct comparison group of teachers with and without degrees placed at the same institutes. |
I'm glad you wrote this and I respect your perspective on it. If you could though, could you provide some actual numbers? I mean something other than just your impressions. Can you please provide numbers relating to educational backgrounds, placement, locations, ect..
(honest, I'm not trying to grab up your business or anything but one thought comes to mind: what if, you ... placed teachers with no degrees in crappier schools. The good schools wanted the best so the unqualified teachers were stuck with something subpar. They get pissed, pull a runner, and you say "hey, he never graduated so that wasn't a surprise")
| Quote: |
That being said, I am not saying that teachers without degrees cannot be good teachers, I am saying based on our internal statistics, teachers with degrees have fared better than those that don't have degrees. You can draw your own conclusions- there is of course room for excpetions to the norm.
However, as has been discussed before, whether individuals without degrees can be good teachers in Korea is a moot point- since by teaching with unaccredited degrees individuals put themselves, their schools and any third party representing at risk. I don't have the link handy - but there was an article in the Globe and Mail a few months ago regarding 50 Canadian teachers who were detained and deported from South Korea- all of whom were teaching illegally in some capacity- some of whom had fake degrees. |
Funny how you only mention the Canadians... interesting.
What I would be more curious about is how many of those caught actually had fake degrees vs how many were working on a tourist visa.
See, the thing is, most people who have been here for awhile want nothing to do with recruiters and little to do with shoddy hogwons. The "Illegals" I know (degree or not) work hard and for themselves.
Seems to me you may just be unhappy about being cut out of the loop. |
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chronicpride
Joined: 16 Jan 2003
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| Posted: Thu Jan 12, 2006 11:01 pm Post subject: |
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FWIW, the Globe and Mail article that he was referring to, came about as a result of the busting of David Kang Recruiting, whose target market was Canadians and he printed degrees for the ones that didn't have one, but looked the part. Apparently, in some cases, he never told some of the teachers that a degree was required for the position, and he would put one in when he or the school would go to Immigration to process the E2. He gave up his teacher list after being busted, and they went around and rounded everyone up.
That issue and the ensuing Globe and Mail article should not even be brought up to be used to sum up the state of affairs over here as far as degree-less teachers go, as that situation was quite unique and ripe with fraud on the recruiter end. |
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Kwangjuchicken
Joined: 01 Sep 2003
Location: I was abducted by aliens on my way to Korea and forced to be an EFL teacher on this crazy planet.
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| Posted: Fri Jan 13, 2006 3:06 am Post subject: |
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Because this thread is going again, I want to know what you all think about online degrees?
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chronicpride
Joined: 16 Jan 2003
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| Posted: Fri Jan 13, 2006 3:27 am Post subject: |
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2005 was the year of the 'degrees' threads and the hundred different versions that cropped up about that. It's a new year. Let's move on.
Unless you guys want to talk about 98 degrees. They don't get overplayed as much as our degree threads do.
 [/url] |
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fusionbarnone
Joined: 31 May 2004
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| Posted: Sat Jan 14, 2006 9:15 am Post subject: |
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Here's an article about an enterprising couple who probably sold the last load of teachers prosecuted for illegal teaching, their sheepskins.
http://chronicle.com/free/v50/i42/42a01401.htm |
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Ben Glickman
Joined: 10 Mar 2004
Location: Vancouver, B.C. Canada
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| Posted: Mon Jan 16, 2006 2:39 pm Post subject: |
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Captain Corea- valid point regarding statistics- I will have to look back through our stats and see if I can come up with some meaningful numbers to back up my previous post regarding teachers breaking contracts, in relation to their post secondary education. With the peace corps - I am not saying that post secondary education is the only criteria, but it is one measure used to determine an individual's ability to succeed and see an endeavour through to fruition.
I chose to post on this board under my own name rather than use a silly nickname and avatar. While this opens the door to criticism, I do this because I don't have anything to hide, and I think that having taught in Korea for four years, and having run a business that includes recruiting teachers to go to Korea for four more years, I have a valid perspective on some of the topics posted here. It is ironic that Chronic first castigates me for promoting my own company while shamelessly shilling yet another portal website. While it may be a nice idea, it has nothing to do with the topic at hand.
With your attitude, it is not surprising you didn't succeed as a recruiter. Luckily we are large enough to affect the paradigm of teachers recruited in Korea- and have been able to work with several of the larger chains of schools and government organizations hiring teachers in order to imove away from hiring teachers based on looks alone. |
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mithridates
Joined: 03 Mar 2003
Location: President's office, Korean Space Agency
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| Posted: Mon Jan 16, 2006 6:09 pm Post subject: |
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| Ben Glickman wrote: |
| I chose to post on this board under my own name rather than use a silly nickname and avatar. |
Yeah! Jongnoguru and I are with you all the way on that one. No posting under silly names with avatars. After all I'm very certain that immigration would never scan the site for people doing privates if everybody used their real names. I trust immigration.
I'm more inclined to look at a person's posting history to see whether they are capable of going off-topic or not. I trust Joe Doufu for example even though I've never met the guy because I know he is here for fun and nothing else.
Generally, the higher the ratio of racing girl-based conversations are to work-based ones, the better off in my book.
Talking about work more often than that is just odd.  Maybe talking about politics or something else too, anything off-topic.
My few months working in a recruiting office haven't qualified me to say anything real on the topic. |
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DHC
Joined: 15 Jan 2003
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| Posted: Tue Jan 17, 2006 12:11 am Post subject: Fake Degrees |
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| Termination of employment and deportation are a minimum response to the use of fake degrees. Since a person usually earns money as a result of his/her fake degrees , if Korean criminal statutes apply , such as fraud , then they should be enforced as well. |
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TheUrbanMyth
Joined: 28 Jan 2003
Location: Retired
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| Posted: Tue Jan 17, 2006 2:32 am Post subject: |
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| Ben Glickman wrote: |
. It is ironic that Chronic first castigates me for promoting my own company while shamelessly shilling yet another portal website. While it may be a nice idea, it has nothing to do with the topic at hand.
With your attitude, it is not surprising you didn't succeed as a recruiter. Luckily we are large enough to affect the paradigm of teachers recruited in Korea- and have been able to work with several of the larger chains of schools and government organizations hiring teachers in order to imove away from hiring teachers based on looks alone. |
A few things though. Mr Chronic's wiki is not accountable to any schools or recruiters and thus is free to post a more honest and accurate account than an typical recruiter would. Moreover he was not castigating you for promoting your own company, just for hyping its image and claiming that you had the teachers' interest first. You (in the generic sense and not YOU specifically) would be something more than human and less than honest to claim that your paycheck(s) are not as least as important to you as someone who you have never met before. You ARE NOT claiming THAT, are you?
And as a recruiter you are accountable to the schools. Mr. Chronic is accountable only to the teachers who use his site, since if he were to post false or misleading information on it, they would be less inclined to visit or contribute.
Notice here that I am not saying anything bad about you or your company. I have never used your services and so I can not comment on your claims, other than to say that in my experience, self-interest (paychecks) generally trumps altruism (acts of kindness for a random stranger). You may be an exception, but generally recruiters in Korea have gained (overall) a negative reputation. Why is this?
You can not gainsay that in the main it is well-deserved. Sure there are some terrible people over here teaching (I have mentioned this many times). But that does not justify the recruiters' actions nor does it merit this angry self-defensive stance that you are taking.
Have a nice day! |
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