Chengdu ft
- 2009-08-03
When I went to the interview, I was told that all the schools were owned by "an American corporation" (translation = naturalized Chinese citizen) and that they were not running a Franchise system. Does any one no anything different?
If you are recruited by these people, be careful because the recruiter (who is western) lives in one city and does not really know the situation at the various schools around China. But that is a recruiter anywhere.
As always check with former and current teachers.
It does seem to be their standard policy to have some sort of laowai on staff in some sort of junior mangement position.
In regards to what the OP said that it might be an okay to work at place if they fix those problems, that is wishful thinking.
Half of the issues revolved around deceit and manipulation of the FT. Poor management practices can be fixed, teaching a grown man ethics will take a life time!
I wouldn't call total losers and jerks, more like naive fools. They are recent college kids that dress really preppy. They remind me of the rich kid frat at my university. All business majors and economics majors with egos.
I really wonder what they actually manage. Any one know?
Crashtests-Marty
- 2009-08-02
There's some truth in all of the above, but can we blame Aston English School or Western management for the problems the OP wrote about Ankang Aston? Aston is only cupable to the degree they knowingly allow greedy business people to exploit the teachers that they recruit from overseas.
I also agree that a lot of foreign managers are not at all qualified to exercise power over teachers. They only need to have completed 6 months of teaching to be eligible to be a manager at Aston, and, as one poster stated, the standard for eligibility could be complicity with Chinese management rather than ability to manage.
While foreign managers can be bad, it sounds worse to work directly for an ace whole franchisee with no one in between as a buffer.
But if you do find yourself in a situation where you work for a jerk, you can tell yourself that you are experiencing the real China from the recieving end, where it hurts.
How many tourists can say that?