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.