I get their demands, but their job posting says 950/hr to start. That’s easily 200/hr more than the highest paying cram school jobs I see posted online in Taiwan. I get that if you work for a small school and have a good relationship with your boss and have worked there for a long time and blablabla you can get more than that, but I’ve always seen British council as “top” for cram school pay?
Edit to add, after reading the whole article: yes, I get that student fees and cost of living have skyrocketed. Id be curious to know how much BC charges for tuition. But all the cram schools have done that over the years (raise the costs to students many times but keep foreign teacher salaries the same). Good for them for their demand but also good luck to them while compared to literally any other place to work with those credentials for good pay that isn’t TES or equivalent.
I’ve been racking my brain trying to figure out why you specifically highlighted this guy as something funny, but I just can’t see it. They’re all doing raised fists and I don’t see anything unusual about his.
The BC management have shot themselves in the foot with this one, IMO. They could easily have chucked a percent or two rise here and there and they would have avoided all of this.
Having said that, they started way too high back in 2003 (?) when they entered the Taiwan market. 950 an hour back then was very tasty indeed. I don’t think they turned a profit* for the first ten or fifteen years.
Really? I mean, I know a lot of people who have something sketchy going on with cram school jobs, but I also know plenty of people who work those jobs totally legally.
BC does have standards though. You need to be qualified to be there and not just another white face whose college diploma may or may not be real (jk, they cracked down on that before my time). But it is kind of sad if they paid 950/hr 20 years ago. What would that be with inflation now? Over 3000? (Not that other cram schools are better, but again, they have no standards)
I think they were competing with some language centers at university extension centers and the like for teachers. People teaching in those programs made a bit over NT$1k/hour 30 years ago. They had real degrees, were reliable. Many had a fair amount of teaching experience. That kind of teacher was hard to come by in those days and that was market in Taipei.