Appallingly low salaries

Work Teaching English in Taiwan
21

But putting this into perspective…

IELTS Examining is never a full time job, it’s supplementary part-time work around the world that takes place on one or two Saturdays per month (and sometimes Sundays for the writing grading). It works out at about NT 1,000 to 1,200 / hour.

12 candidates is not necessarily the limit in busy centers and in places where where there are examiner shortages (like in Kaohsiung, for example). I was examining two weekends a month, Saturdays and Sundays each weekend, and I pulled in quite a bit of extra cash. Each time I had about 16-18 candidates. Even with 12, though, you are talking about NT 6,500 a day examining speaking and writing (about 5 to 6 hours of work).

Your money is taxed at 6%, like all other work in Taiwan.

Cancellations are very, very rare. The exam is expensive and no-shows don’t happen often. They don’t get refunds if they don’t show up.

Training sessions are only once every two years.

It’s also a fantastic resume builder, especially for moving on to other places with. Plus, you can examine anywhere once you are certified.

22

Gotta admit that’s a nice little number you have there . . . and it’s nice that you get paid for all those extra jobs you do. I teach a 14 hour week and get 64,000, so you’re getting more than 30,000 more than me plus working 4 hours less a week. But there are drawbacks to these university jobs. For example, my university won’t allow its teachers to work outside at buxibans to supplement their meagre incomes; there is pressure to publish more; there is pressure to get a Ph.d; there is pressure put on us to do more admin duties; there is pressure to proof read students’ doctoral dissertations; there is pressure to attend meetings; there is the pressure of getting to our sister campus which is far away; there is the pressure of teaching students who don’t want to be taught; there is the pressure of passing students that shouldn’t pass; there is the pressure of grading over 400 test papers; and so on ad infinitum. At the end of the day I have to ask myself: Is it really worth it?

23

Yeah, that’s true about the pressure. I’m getting pressure to publish, so I’m dusting off some grad school seminar papers and tinkering with them a little. The PhD was just mentioned to me by the president of our school, but outside of Tai Da, I don’t know where I could do it in northern Taiwan. He suggested maybe Fu Jen, but then he checked their web site and they don’t offer PhDs.

Luckily (or, I don’t know if we’re lucky for this) but our is just a Language Center, and not a full on English Dept, so no dissertations. Many of the students, however, are not interested in English, and I have 2 classes with 66 students apiece in them. Not easy to control those unless I put them to work on some task that I will collect and grade, and then…a mountain (literally) of work to take home!

24

Getting a Ph.d is the way to go if you want to stay in the tertiary sector, but isn’t the way to go if you want to earn good money and have piece of mind. Most teachers at my university have MA’s and there is pressure to get a Ph.d because that’s what improves the reatings of the universites. However, getting a Ph.d takes a considerable amount of investment in time, money, and anxiety. For example, one lady at our university has just got her Ph.d and told me that she’d have to work for the next 30 years in order to pay-off the loan! This is not surprising because a Ph.d’s starting salary is around $NT67,000, which is pittance considering both the investment you have made and the extra pressure that is now on you to publish frequently. Basically what will happen in the future is that foreigners will stop coming here to take-up positions in the universities because it simply doesn’t make economic sense and locals will be hired to make-up the shortfall, meaning that standards will plummet ever further and the whole university sector will have no credibility both locally or internationally.

25

NT$550/hour appallingly low? Nice rhetoric, but you’re dead wrong. That’s better than US$18/hour. Not bad at all for a job that doesn’t require any technical expertise, professional degree, or prior experience, and basically involves chatting with a bunch of pretty girls (and guys).

In fact, it’s three times what many Americans earn. Check out US state laws on required minimum wages.
Kansas: $2.65/hour
Wyoming and Georgia: $5.15/hour
Minnesota: $5.25/hour
Texas, Virginia, Kentucky, Utah and S. Dakota: $5.85/hour
Maryland: $6.15/hour
Arkansas: $6.25/hour
The highest minimum wage in the US is in Washington, at $8.07/hour
Massachusetts and California are next highest, at $8.00/hour

According to the latest census results, the average college graduate in the US earns US$45,400/year (US$25,900 for HS graduates). That equates to NT$1,382,543/year. Divided by 12, that’s NT$115,211/month. After accounting for taxes and cost of living, who do you think pockets more in the end?

That’s right, teaching in Taiwan actually pays quite well. On the other hand, salaries in the US are appallingly low.

26

MT, you are very right. For a person coming to Taiwan without any sort of qualification in the field of education or TEFL, slipping into a teaching job that pays $18 / hour is very good. Heck, I knew so many people teaching in southern Taiwan who only had a high school diploma (some of them buxiban owners!). A lot of these people stay indefinitely in Taiwan…after all, they are not marketable anywhere else. It’s a good gig for them.

However, for a person with experience and a TEFL cert, for example, $18 / hour is a joke.

The unfortunate thing is that salaries are going up in places like China, Vietnam, and Thailand, and they are not going up in Taiwan…this means that Taiwan eventually will not be able to compete (I think this is already starting to be the case).

University wages are definitely too low…especially for a person with relevant qualifications. I don’t understand why people still even entertain the idea of moving to Taiwan to teach at universities there. They inevitably have to do supplementary buxiban work or a lot of privates to bring their salaries up to a decent level. How depressing.

27

I suppose it’s human nature to compare our positions with alternatives and weigh-up the pros and cons. However that really doesn’t help matters because we’re in Taiwan and NOT America. What we need to do is look at the objective facts of living here. It seems to me that a pattern is emerging from this thread: Those that come here with a BA degree and nothing more, can do ‘fairly well’ earning $550 an hour or less. It is the buxibans that thrive on these people, using them up and spitting them out, and replacing them if they play-up with the next person who just stepped-off the plane. Don’t get me wrong, these folks can have a ball here teaching “pretty girls”, but objectively speaking the wage is still low.

Then there are a second group of teachers who have an MA or Ph.d and it is they who are really getting screwed. Although we have met folks along our journey in this thread who claim to earn $NT94,000 for a 10-hour week, these jobs are certainly the exception to the rule. Typically, a Ph.d will earn no more than $NT70,000 when he takes up his position at a local university. This of course may be enough for him to live on, but for many of us it isn’t. Thus, in order to put ourselves over the $NT100,000 mark, we take up jobs in the private sector to boost our meagre salaries. Now, as I noted before, at my university we are forbidden to take up jobs at buxibans because we are the “property” of the university at which we work and our contract verifies that. So, what do we do? Well, we could work illegally at a buxiban(risky), work a maximum of 6 hours at another university as long as we have permission from our own, or take privates. Whatever we do, it all takes time and money and a great deel of tooing-and-froowing, which ultimately takes its toll on our mental and physical health. My point is that, as professionals who have invested an awful lot of money in our education, we shouldn’t have to take additional employment in order to SURVIVE. No, if the university themselves paid us a quality salary, we’d be happy to stay put right there, but, alas, people eventually see the light and move on . . .

28

I totally agree with you here. Why should a person in your position, with all of the additional work that comes with the job and who has a Masters or PhD, work their tails off for about $25,000 a year with no expat benefits? It’s insane.

In Taiwan, before I had my Masters, I was working at a buxiban and my husband was teaching at a university. Even though he only had 14 teaching hours at the uni, the amount of extra work he had to do (grading, exam writing, teaching enormous classes and the huge amount of planning, etc.) in addition to the extra work he did on the side to supplement his income meant that he was working longer hours than I was, and I was actually making more (but, he did have lots of paid holiday time). Overall, though, it really wasn’t worth it.

And then you add the pressure to get your PhD, like someone mentioned before on this thread…what? To get $100 more a month??? Why on earth would anyone bother? It’s such a joke. :frowning:

My husband actually liked his job, but in the end we just had to look at things in perspective to realize that we needed to move on to something different.

29

You keep talking about “breaking the NT$100,000 mark” and about earning enough to “survive.” Minimum wage here is like less than NT$30,000 per month and those people are “surviving.” People on NT$60,000, NT$70,000 and up for doing nothing other than teaching ESL are doing a lot better than “surviving” if you ask me.
I know a lot of teachers. A LOT of teachers. Of those with PhDs I don’t think I know ANY who are only earning enough to “survive” – in fact, pretty much all the teachers I know make more than I do and seem to manage to live quite well on it.
And you also mention “the stress and loneliness” of living in Taiwan, as if it were some kind of a “hardship” post or something. :laughing:
University jobs, though do seem to be pretty unattractive – its probably because PhD or not, you’re still regarded by many Taiwanese employers here as just an ESL teacher – a step up from a backpacker – to be paid commensurate to that. You need to remember that its not that many years ago that the ONLY foreigners teaching here were young backpackers making a quick few bucks to fund their next Asian jaunt, and that image – the one in which ANY foreigner daft enough to come here must be a real loser who couldn’t find a job anywhere else – persists.

30

IMO, it’s not really a matter of “surviving” per se, but about how much you can save to travel home periodically to see family and save for retirement. Most Taiwanese have their retirement plans in order (i.e. a son to take care of them when they get old) but many Westerners are not in that situation. Everything has to be taken into account…not just what it is possible to technically live on month to month, but what is realistic for a person’s future well-being, too.

31

Sandman wrote:

Well, I guess it is a hardship posting for women! :laughing: :beer:

Good thread lotusblossom. You have touched on a real problem.
Don’t worry about old hands like Sandman - they are in for life.

32

Whatever. Back when I earned my MA (in English with emphasis in Teaching Writing), more than 20 years ago, people quipped that PhD stood for Pile it Higher and Deeper or Post-Hole Digger. Sure enough, the MLA lists only 1700 university positions teaching English in all of the US. How many candidates do you think are competing for that handful of positions? 20 each? 30? 50?

I know when my bright, talented roommate earned a PhD in English, about a decade ago, he searched the whole country for employment and ended up stuck in hell-hole Valdosta, Georgia, which he hated. Later he worked his way to a position in California, but his work sounds miserable, with all the required meetings, administrative BS, and pressure to constantly publish. I suspect the workload here is much more reasonable.

In any event, if one doesn’t like the opportunities here one can always look elsewhere. But, if you think it’s so much better elsewhere, I’m not sure you’re correct. In the US anyway, I suspect uni positions are extremely hard to come by, the pay sucks, the administrative demands are a pain in the ass, and people are constantly being canned due to budget cuts.

I still think $18/hour to bullshit with a bunch of kids is pretty good pay. I admit, it may seem sad that I would refer to your esteemed teaching profession as bullshitting with a bunch of kids, or suggest that $18/hour is good pay for one who has read so many books and plagiarized. . . er, I mean written so many obscure, scholarly articles. But I’ve been there. I come from a family of PhDs and professors, I attended Uni for 10 years and earned a doctorate myself. But I’m not afraid to tell it like it is. Sure, it would be great if governments paid massive subsidies for eggheads to conduct years of research and write dissertations on fascinating trivia, that no one will read, rather than spending it all on weapons and other useless crap. But that’s the way the world works; better to accept it than dream of a world that will never be.

Heck, my first job in Taiwan was teaching kindie. It didn’t bother me that I had multiple advanced degrees and 10 years of professional experience (in a real profession :wink: ). I enjoyed that work. I liked working with the kids. And I was perfectly satisfied with the pay. Eventually, I was offered more advanced, professional work and I’ve greatly enjoyed the subsequent work I’ve moved into (and the much greater pay). But, teaching is teaching. The pay sucks worldwide. Anyone should know that when they start working on their degree. I seriously doubt Taiwan is much worse than any other somewhat civilized country in that respect.

33

Actually, Taiwan is one of the worst in terms of pay and benefits that I have come across, with a few exceptions. I had looked extensively into jobs / working conditions around the globe while doing my Masters, trying to decide where to apply for jobs. I am afraid that Taiwan is pretty much on the bottom rung when compared to other unis I looked into overseas, especially so when compared to other countries in the region like Japan and Korea.

34

Minimum wage here is like less than NT$30,000 per month and those people are “surviving.” People on NT$60,000, NT$70,000 and up for doing nothing other than teaching ESL are doing a lot better than “surviving” if you ask me.(Sandman)

The minimum wage in Taiwan is around $NT17,340 per month. Maybe you could survive on that? There are currently 4 or 5 KMT legislators who are petitioning Mayor Ma to abolish this because they feel that businesses cannot pay such exhorbitant wages to stay afloat! You need to look at the objective facts: Taipei is one of the most expensive cities in the world and rents are not cheap, which is why most young(and old) Taiwanese continue living at home even though they work. As noted in the first post I posted here: Employers often pay teachers according to contact time worked, although, what really counts in law is the total time spent at the employer’s disposal. Thus, while $NT100,000 might sound a lot, once the hours that you spend travelling, grading, attending meetings, teaching, office hours, grading, etc, the $NT100,000 doesn’t amount to very much. Remember, there are no unions in our business fighting for us, so we either like it or lump it. And for those who are earning minimum wages, the mind boggles. I really don’t know how they live. Sure, they survive, but shouldn’t life be about more than that???

Just one other thing, Sandman. You mention that this might be a “hardship post”. Well, for your information, there is much hardship here if you read the newspapers and keep your ear to the ground and pay attention to what’s going on. You see, Sandman, I empathise with those who are working every hour that god sends so that the can merely eke out a living. This is not right. Bosses, if they are making lots of money, should reward those who helped them make it to the top instead of using the profit to build opulent palaces to themselves just like the Italian nobles of the 17th Century!

35

“who claim to earn $NT94,000 for a 10-hour week”

I was hired at 75,000 per month, and that included 10k for admin duties (which haven’t turned out to be very much). It’s a wealthy private school and even the 65k base was higher than typical starting pay, but they offered it to be competitive (told them I was also interviewing at Tai Da).

The additional 20k was a surprise add-on when they received a large chunk of government to "upgrade", and having a "Visiting Scholar" on hand was one way to prove they were spending the well. That 20k will be gone after 2 years.

Also, with the admin duties, I am required to teach less hours.

To those working in universities, I recommend drafting a couple of memos regarding setting up some English activities that are probably sorely lacking. Explain in the memo why these activities -which you will administer- are above and beyond your current duties and require extra payment. Talk about ‘English environments’ ‘fostering English dialogue’ ‘input’ ‘internalizing language’ and all that good stuff. How can they say no? If they don’t have a bona fide Writing Center, they most certainly need one. Be the one to start it up, and get them to pay you for it.

I love my job. If I wasn’t so fortunate and had a take a position starting at 53 or 54k per year for 12 hours of work, I would be very unhappy.

36

Unfortunately, that is more the norm in Taiwan.

Your situation is very unusual indeed! Good for you. :slight_smile:

37

Out of curiosity, B. Smoothie, do you get paid holidays? The reason I ask is because we had a friend in Taiwan who was making more than the typical uni instructor at 85,000 / month, but he didn’t get any paid holiday time. That equalled about 4 months per year unpaid.

75,000 / month is higher than what I have heard is typically paid, that’s why I ask.

38

I get paid 12 months per year, + bonus. Trust me, I’ve got to pinch myself sometimes.

I had actually given up and resigned myself to going back to the buxiban when I received 33 polite rejections on my CV. Came out of nowhere.

39

I had a 30 hour a week buxiban job once that paid 75000 a month. No holidays or sick days though. And I was stuck there from 8:30 till 4 or six every day. The money was good but I got sick of the management and the rich kids with stupid parents and the bad books and the commute and the management and the…

Maybe I blew it but I like having a couple of part timers with privates better and I usually make more than that now. I also work Saturdays and I love it. Really. Variety.

40

…because the first thing people do after getting their 4-year degree is rush to Kansas to sling hash for 2.65/hr