Hi Terry. You SHOULD be much better off in a public university. It's a different game, and it used to be the only safe bet. Since you are committed, you can look forward to very nice students. I'm assuming it's a "public" university, for students who actually earned their way in there, and NOT a private university for students who have money but couldn't make it into a public university (I hear those students are dreadful). But probably you will have the really good variety of students.

It'll probably be fine. If you don't know what the deal was supposed to be, you probably won't mind if you lost some of your benefits or had 2-4 hours tacked onto your schedule. A big part of my problem was the job kept getting worse. They added 2 hours, then they added bullshit classes, then the Chinese teachers all got raises and my salary fell blow theirs, then they started demanding a curriculum and lesson plans, now the are cutting out the summer vacation. So, it's intolerable for the job to get worse. But if you step into it without knowing that the standard contract used to be 12-14 hours a week, but you are working 16-20, and teachers used to get paid for 12 months a year, but you are only getting paid for 10… it won't piss you off. But you can imagine if you are someplace and they were just to say, "Hey, we're going to add 2 hours a week and reduce your pay by 10% at the same time," you'd probably want to tell them to go F themselves. But if you just walk in the door and your are working 8 more hours a week for 15% less, you can still be smiling and stupid and gullible and even do extra tasks for leaders to "show your appreciation."

Ah well, you'll have a good experience if you are a good teacher. Can I ask what city you'll be living in?

Good luck. And do take everything I've said with a grain of salt. I'm a little pissed off at China at the moment, especially because I've had a much softer landing somewhere else and wonder why I ever dealt with all that crap. There is a lot of value in living and experiencing China. It's priceless. But so much depends on the job. Still, public universities are the safest jobs in China. On the other hand I've gone back to working for a training school, but only because it's not run by businessmen, there are no leaders to deal with, no English Corners, no extra-curricular activities, and basically no bullshit whatsoever. Training schools in China can be the worst, depending on the bosshole who runs the show. I worked in one that was OK, and then really bad, and another that was absolute shit from the get-go, but could have been even worse.

Cheers.