Can you work legally with a Masters Degree but no Bachelors

OH I SEE ! You don’t want a fake degree you want the whole package: fake diploma, fake transcripts, phony school office with fax to verify it too, with phony certifying “credentials” like:
Hey guy that stuff… Hmmm how what would Sandman say… oh yeah er Get Stuffed !
WOW that shit gets pricey I hear!
Do yer own homework, oh yeah and they know that trick too, but let us know how it works out
really :laughing:

Dunno. Why not try it and let us know.
I would imagine a fairly simple method would be to just call up the admissions office and check that the name on the paper and the year of conferral corresponds with their records.
Another method they’ve been known to use is to make you submit the degree to the Taiwan rep office nearest the school in question and ask THEM to check its veracity.
If you’re asking for actual percentages, you’re out of luck.

So they actually do this frequently or is this one in a million? In Mainland China you can’t work without a work visa and almost every English teacher is, and I NEVER heard of anyone getting caught. In Taiwan they are actually frequently checking the degrees by contacting the schools in the forsigner’s country you say?

Well my Masters Degree won’t work and a fake Bachelor’s Degree would make me way paranoid, so unfortunately I can’t go to teach in Taiwan. I am real sad about this. I was so looking forward to living there.

try this tread, you can “search” right ? MA ?
I’m been told by my school that the NIA requires my BA to be verified and that I have to do all the running around. The school has also told me that the NIA is now checking 20% of all certificates. Is anyone else out there currently being told the same thing?

but lets say they are checking only 20%… If you are in the 80% who are not checked and you change jobs or take a second job for whatever reason, simple maths tells me you are likely to have your degree checked when you apply for your next work permit… if that makes sense

So basically have real Bachelor’s Degree from their choice of schools or don’t go to Taiwan to teach. Such bullshit! You should get hired if you are a good teacher. You can have a PhD and be the worst teacher in the world.

20 x 5 = 100 %[url]Verification of BA

You think THAT’S bad? Think about the hassles Isis has to go through trying to explain away the grass-stains on the knees of his overalls and the animal dung under his fingernails?

You think THAT’S bad? Think about the hassles Isis has to go through trying to explain away the grass-stains on the knees of his overalls and the animal dung under his fingernails?[/quote]

Who is this Isis of which you speak? I know an Iris, and if its the same person, I’ve seen what you are talking about up close… and its not pretty

Obviously there have been crackdowns. How likely is it to happen to you? Its hard to say and probably noone has the answer. But by living in Taiwan and if you are a teacher, you should be able to know how strict they check or not.
I wouldn’t be able to do it. I would be too paranoid.

So does everyone agree I can’t teach in Taiwan? I assume you have to be legal to make decent money teaching English there.

It’s pretty simple really.

The checks apparently go through the TECO offices in the country where the university is located. My degree was evidently checked back in 1995 when I was getting a new job at a different university (they took so long about it that I lost out on a year of seniority in my new job :fume: while another teacher who knew enough to go around them and communicate with the TECO in question herself got that year credited to her). Anyway, it’s not too difficult for TECO, which are in the US, to get in touch with a school and check whether Joe Blow has a certain degree or not.

If the school is not on their list, the application isn’t even going to reach the checking stage.

If your MA school were on the list, you’d probably be okay with or without a BA (caveat: old information ca. 1998). When I went through the process they checked my MA (for the Lecturer’s license) and then later my Ph.D. (for the Assoc Prof license, when I was promoted) but never made a peep about my BS. I mean the degree, not my protests. You know. :smiley:

Ironlady you had the most informative post about this yet. I appreciate it. And would you say it is likely that a new English teacher in Taiwan would get checked?
Would you recommend me not to go to Taiwan?

I wouldn’t recommend anybody come here to teach at this point in time. Qualification issues aside, the market for teachers is saturated and its getting harder and harder to make decent coin.

forumosa.com/taiwan/viewtopic.php?t=59046 this thread should prove interesting reading

[quote=“taiwiener”]20 x 5 = 100 %[/quote]Nope, that’s like saying if you toss a coin twice are you guaranteed a heads.
I believe it’s more like 1-((1-0.2)^5) which gives you a 67.2% chance. Is my maths right there ?

I don’t think he’ll get a work visa either.

Yeah my luck sucks ass!

Oh well, glad I didn’t buy a plane ticket. Take your degrees and shove them up your arse Taiwan! You’ll never speak good English anyways ya tossers! Degree or no degree you all speak fuckin Chinglish! LOSERS! Spend more energy in teaching your people how to drive.

Isis, as the name should imply if you have half a brain, is of course the Irish goddess of sheepshagg… I mean inter-species eroticists. Followers, such as Iris, believe that when they are in the act of um … congress, they actually become ONE with Isis. Therefore the Iris/Isis paradigm becomes entirely moot. See?

I have no idea how they check degrees.
All I know is that I was teaching for 2 years, when all of a sudden degree wasn’t accepted. They found out too many people are using fake degrees, and I had to go to my Foreign Affairs office here in Taipei and have it stamped by a worker there. She went into the back for a while, and came out and stamped it. Maybe they have a list of universities and people who got degrees from there?

My degree was accepted and I renewed my ARC. THen the next year they didn’t accept my sisters 3 yrs BA degree. THey just decided to not allow 3 yr degrees, but luckily a couple of months later, changed their minds!! So I got to renew it again. Then all of a sudden they wanted my HOME country to stamp the degree. Poor sis(who always hears the bad news first because hers expires before mine) had a huge schlep of being back home on holiday, sending it to Cape Town, and they sent it to JHB, to get stamped. Again, a couple of months later, mine got the thumbs up, just with the stamp from Taipei.

My friends story…she’s been teaching in Keelung(here in Taiwan) for 3 yrs. She just moved to Taipei and applied, and got turned down because she studied at a technikon. Not a university. SO they accepted it in Keelung(sounds fishy to me) but not in Taipei.

So yes, they really check if your degree is real or not. It sucks, but you would propably get trouble if you don’t have one. I wouldn’t try the fake thing either…because you can get in SOOO much trouble if youre caught.

And finally, is teaching English without an ARC risky? What’s the deal with that?
Man Taiwan is sounding kind of crappy!

Well, that’s me told… but I’m still not convinced

Well again, you can teach illegally without the ARC… but that means visa runs every 30 or 60days to HK or wherever, no medical insurance etc… People do do this, but again its getting riskier and riskier