Ever
- 2014-02-27
Many Chinese employers are not worried at all about qualifications, in some cases not even where they are a legal requirement. Particularly private/training schools are primarily interested in whether you have the right look. Even within public schools and universities 'oral english' which is what most FTs are employed to teach is generally viewed as a bit of a side show to the main event of passing exams which in the case of English exams in China doesn't generally include a spoken element. If your job is not deemed important you shouldn't expect to receive a high salary - this is true within any industry. Therefore, we shouldn't be surprised that they are not willing to pay higher wages for a job which foreigners (if you believe the views of the OP) and Chinese see as being second rate and unskilled. I think it's unfair to label the Chinese as being cheap or stingy given that 6000RMB+additional costs of living is a higher than average wage for an unskilled worker there.
giver or taker?
- 2014-02-27
It is true that many universities are now looking for MA holders, but don't want to pay them correctly. Yep, about 5000, maximum, 6000. I realize that many foreign teachers who are well-off financially just teach at universities in China for the visa, but they are still being ripped off in a way by the Chinese. If they have advanced degrees, or years of teaching experience they should be paid accordingly, but the Chinese are always too stingy and cheap.
juanisaac
- 2014-02-26
But also you have to factor in that you get what you paid for. Why should good, qualified teachers earn bottom dollar when they can earn so much more somewhere else? My old middle school was offerring 5,000 Yuan per month last year for their foreign teacher. My ex-F.A.O. then complained to me that they could find no one. Duh, they were offering what I earned four years ago. They increased their salary to 6,000 now.
Also, some universities are looking to land non-English language teachers with an M.A. with the same 5,000 Yuan salary. And in the end they get the first person in the door or somebody from "German Cameroon." Cameroon was a colony of Germany before W.W.I before it later became "British Cameroon." (The Africans can an "A' for enterprise.)
The Chinese are pretty cheap and I doubt they will try to compete on the open market for good teachers unless they offer higher salaries.
http://www.usingenglish.com/speaking-out/esl-employment.html
By no means the best article that I've read in recent times, but one that touches upon issues that I have mentioned recently. The quality levels amongst foreigners coming to China is decreasing quite a lot and it the industry seems to be indeed be facing 'a drive to the bottom' due to the current economic situation in the West. But one interesting point was:
The market is saturated, and has been likened to the 'migrant labor situation of the 1930’s in America'. With students in places like the UK graduating heavily in debt, the salaries offered in many ESL schools won't attract them, so standards will inevitably fall.
I find this point very interesting because when I first arrived in China and was teaching in other industries, English teaching seemed not to be the highest calibre job around, but it was at least a respectable thing to do, usually done by old retiring men or young students, only intending to teach for 1 or 2 years after graduating to delay entering the real world of work or at least to try to do something positive for the world, before they take on a job that actually pays the bills back home.
Now, it usually seems to be the case that people are only coming over because they can't find employment back home, the title 'English teacher' seems to have a greater stigma attached to it, than ever before.
For some of us, it is still just a stop-gap or a career break, but for increasingly large numbers of foreign teachers, teaching was a job that they took as a last resort, a job that they never really wanted but was forced to take. It is not a healthy situation, to say the least.
If things carry on like this, the industry will never attract those passionate teachers that actually want to teach!