Accredited online TESOL MA usable at private uni in Taiwan?

Sorry about not reading carefully enough. Yes, you could get a job based on this. It might be problematic because it’s not in an English-related field, but it’s legally possible.

There is no country in the world where a university-level teaching position would consider a DELTA. If the minimum educational requirements for a such a teaching position is an MA, and a candidate has only a BA+CELTA, they won’t be hired. It’s just that simple. There’s nowhere. Why would there be? These are universities.

ScottSommers knows his stuff and he needs to be listened to.

This is the main problem the OP will encounter. His on-campus MA is not in either an English or Educational field. This is what the MOE are looking for. I have no idea if they will take an MA in Chinese coupled with an online TESOL. If it were me I certainly wouldn’t risk taking the online TESOL in the hope that it would be accepted.

There are a few people working in unis here who have online masters. There are a lot of guys who have ended up working part-time at unis because their online masters were not accepted.

Thank you Tom. I guess that’s what the answer comes down to. It’s a very tough market right now and the MOE wants to make it tougher. Who knows what would happen to the OP if he starts looking for work here with these kind of expectations. Taiwan’s still an unpredictable place. He might get lucky. But then he might not. It does seem the whole premise of the post is about slipping in when he or she knows they’re not really properly qualified for the job. In that sense, it answers itself. My honest feeling is he or she’s probably out of luck. At my school, I’m not on the hiring committee anymore, but when I was, we would have probably ignored an application like this without some significant other qualification, such as extensive university teaching experience or an impressive publication record. Even then, I’m not sure the MOE would issue an instructor’s licence.

OP seems quite committed to teaching here, so I don’t want to be too discouraging. It’s just a really harsh market right now and the end is nowhere in sight. My school won’t be hiring any English teachers for next year, no matter who they are. The MOE is closing dozens of universities. I just can’t imagine a scenario where OP would even get his CV noticed. But that’s just me. I think I know what’s going on, but I don’t know everything. And like I said, things are still unpredictable here, so who knows? I just wouldn’t be betting on it working out.

Well, I can get a lecturers’ certificate based on my China Studies (local) MA quite easily. My advisor said he can hook something up to get me one. After that it’s just a question of the hiring process. No TESOL distance MA says “Online MA” on the degree, by the way; though academic transcripts very well may betray such information (not sure about this; it depends on the school I’m guess). If this weren’t an issue, and the lecturers’ certificate degree is the only degree that the MoE needs to scrutinize, maybe it is possible. Still, sounds like I’d better not get my hopes up. That’s a little disheartening but it’s always good to have a reality check to know my options. I’ve thought about doing the MA here, but that’s not very valuable for a foreigner abroad, or even in Taiwan.

I won’t ever begin to pretend that I truly understand what is going on within Taiwanese bureaucracy. What I am sure of, though, is that the MOE is getting tighter and tighter when dishing out lecturer’s licences. Also, most unis in Taipei seem to only be looking for PhD holders. Outside Taipei it looks like MAs are still enough.

Well, fingers crossed for you dashgalaxy. I suppose it’s a case of hope for the best, but be prepared for the worst.

Over on another thread, someone posted,

[quote=“adikarmika”]For those who are interested, I discovered a good way to find casual work at a university: present a paper at a conference.

I presented at a conference last week and got two unsolicited offers of casual work.

The academic standard of your paper needn’t be high. My paper was merely a report on a small research project that I did several years ago as part of some Applied Linguistics postgrad coursework. Some of the other presentations were more like workshops.

However, the opportunity for directors of departments to see you speak and for you to establish contacts appears to be quite valuable.[/quote]

This is quite true. But note he is talking about part-time work. That’s where most of the excess labor is being soaked up. In fact, PT work does not pay well and is probably not a good route into full-time work. I know no one who was hired FT from a PT position, although I am sure it happens.

What foreign teachers are looking for when talk about “teaching at a university” is a job with only a few hours of teaching that are mostly daytime hours, paid summer vacations, a livable salary, and the promise of long-term employment. As you would expect, there aren’t a lot of these jobs left. You can get them, but you have to be competitive. What the MOE is forcing on schools is research. As the quote above indicates, the best way into a school, even PT, is through a demonstration of interest in attending conferences and writing papers.

I wrote about this situation a while back
scottsommers.wordpress.com/2009/ … s-in-asia/

PT may not lead directly to FT, but you can make your CV look good through PT work at a prestigious institution (perhaps leading to FT work at a less prestigious institution).