Ha! A sofite I am not. I'm old and crusty. Well, not that old! There seems to be this double-standard in the TEFL field in regard to qualifications. Such that you are second-rate if you're American. And yet everywhere I look, Americans are heavily recruited. Again, not enough EU citizens to fill the vacancies, so make do and get an American instead. CELTA was created to give a standard to the TEFL industry and make it less difficult for native speakers to acquire teaching jobs - yet I have my doubts about the CELTA program. My ignorance about the field, perhaps? But at least I will have a lot of time to learn more before I plan to go abroad.

Sure, if you have a degree in ANY subject, you are more likely to get employed, and of course that makes sense - to a point. I see a lot of TESL marketing to people with undergraduate degrees that have nothing to do with teaching. Is that good for the learners? Perhaps it will be some times and other times not. I know a great many educated people who don't know what I know about teaching and teaching languages in particular - they don't have any experience at all on the business end of a classroom and I seriously doubt that a 4 week CELTA course will give them much more than a nice piece of paper to help them get jobs and help the school sponsoring them collect fees, if their heart is not in teaching. Nothing against CELTA - I will probably just shut up and get one as well.