Furthermore, in my view, if a foreign (male) English teacher did not take advantage of the cheap beer and the willingness of a certain percentage of the female population the get into bed with a foreigner, THAT would be the sign of a weirdo or a loser. (As long as it is done in moderation, of course.)[/quote]
seriously that’s just wrong, shagging just cos you can?![/quote]
no sex pleeze i’m a kiwi abc?
you’ve got a way of summing life up pretty well in one post. If you could turn that into a job you’d be doing just fine…
I agree with what GuyInTaiwan said in his last post and it reminded me of something a local said to me not too long ago. That is the average Taiwanese makes something like 30,000 NT a month. If you are lucky you make 40,000 a month and a master’s degree will net you 50,000 before taxes.
Whenever I hear some Taiwanese say this when foreigners are complaining about not getting paid enough, part of me understands what they are saying and the other part of me thinks “Waah!”
First of all, not all Taiwanese are making 50,000 a month tops. Last week I saw a Lambourghini Gallardo going down Gong-yi road. Why do you think there are all these luxury shops here? It’s not like these people are suffering for money.
Second, like GuyInTaiwan said, many Taiwanese females are living with their parents well into their thirties waiting for some rich guy to marry them. I know of one woman in Taipei who makes 100,000 a month working for a Japanese company. How does she live? She blows a large percentage of what she makes each month partying and living large while staying at home with her parents until somebody comes along and marries her.
Meanwhile, most foreigners living over here are receiving little to no help from Mom and Dad back home. They had to pay their way over here. Rent, utilities, and food can add up. A Taiwanese friend from America visited me over here and said “This place is expensive.” If you have dependants, you can add another 20,000 per month per kid.
Third Japan and Korea on average pay more (in the case of Japan much more) than Taiwan does. What is there to attract a foreigner to teach in Taiwan from a financial perspective. Is it so wrong to want Taiwan to pay a comparable rate to what other countries in the region are paying. That Lambourghini the other day convinced me they have the power to do it.
Guy - if you are planning to stay here, then a Master’s wouldn’t make much sense. You could teach a few privates and make that extra $8000. But if you plan to leave, then there’s no reason why you couldn’t do an online masters as it’d be perfectly acceptable everywhere else.
I’m 37, married and we’re thinking of a baby in the next couple of years. My wife and I combined would earn a little more than you but not much. We also live in Taipei so living costs are much higher. Yet we’re doing ok. As my business grows, we’ll do even better but even on what we make now, nothing is too much of a stretch.
Sorry, GIT, but I can’t agree with you. I have know too many people here who have gone on and make a success out of their life here. And I am just talking about a small backwater, I’m sure there are much more in other parts of Taiwan.
Sorry if I left out anyone, but I will give a few examples.
Shanghai Bob, passed away last year doing what he loved, catching that perfect wave. Bob was the first Aussie I ever met, and what a great ambassador he was. A perfect gentleman, a commercial artist and ad copywriter, came to Asia about 30 years ago, 15 years ago started his own surfing accessory company in Shanghai, also lived in Taidong half of the year to do what he loved most, surfing, and to test his new products. Now has a surf spot named after him, and if you ever come down to Taidong, be sure to check out Bob’s Reef.
John, American from the west coast, went to Uni in Hawaii, caught the surfing bug, and moved to Taiwan to teach and study Chinese. Been here 25 years, runs a successful night club, and acts as a booking agent for a lot of resorts and big hotels to promote bands from the Philippines.
Mike, A Canadian from BC. Came to Taiwan 25 years ago, Masters in Linguistics, started a successful busiban and later sold out at a nice profit. Still teaches and is raising his three sons in Taidong.
Pete, American from Tennessee, been in Taidong at least 10 years, got his Masters while in Taiwan, now owns a pizza shop and picks the banjo as often as he can.
Paul, American from Michigan, came to Taidong about 10 years ago, also runs a busiban, and is raising 3 kids. His motto, teaching is a means to SURF.
The list goes on and on. I have meet many more success stories here than failures.
Maybe find a better crowd to hang with.
Nice post. Thanks 
I think you are underestimating the quality of Taiwanese universities. National Taiwan University is ranked 115 in the world in the Times Higher Education World Universities Rankings. It would probably rank higher if the faculty had received their primary education in English. It has many distinguished alumni who have gone on to excel in many fields all over the world. Of course many have higher degrees overseas, but the point is that they were in no way handicapped by having been educated in Taiwan first.
If your kids can get in, you will also find it to be a great deal. NTU’s tuition and fees are less than NT$60,00! That’s 20% of the fees you were quoting for Melbourne. It’s a great example of how Taiwan works. Reasonable quality at a great price.
cfimages: It will be a problem if you ever want to send your kids abroad to study. It will also be a problem in retirement unless you’re living fairly frugally now. I’m actually really torn about whether to stay in Taiwan or move abroad. As I wrote, I actually do like where I live right now.
saddletramp: Again, you’re talking about people who start businesses. All of the statistics I’ve seen regarding businesses is that they’re very far from a sure thing. Otherwise, everyone would be out there doing that instead of working for someone else. My father ran his own business for more than twenty years and did well for himself, but a) he worked ridiculously hard (as in 80-100 hour weeks), especially in the first five years, b) plenty of other people in his industry also worked ridiculously hard and still weren’t successful. It’s like looking at Warren Buffett and saying everyone can be a successful investor, or Kobe Bryant and saying everyone should go and start playing basketball.
Let’s just say though that every single English teacher in this country decided to go out and start a buxiban or pizza shop, however. Suddenly, there would be massive competition. Let’s say a whole lot of Taiwanese also jumped on the bandwagon and opened buxibans and pizza shops. There’d be even more competition, which is why for Taiwanese run buxibans, there is already a race to the bottom. In places such as Taoyuan, where I used to live, you could close your eyes, spin around and touch half a dozen buxibans practically anywhere in the city. Ten or twenty years ago, I’m sure there was an absolute killing to be made in running a buxiban. These days, the average buxiban laoban is probably grinding out 30,000NTD/month after expenses. Even if it’s slightly more, it’s still probably a very low return on investment, especially given that it’s also the primary source of income. In the case of foreigners, if every foreigner ran out and opened a buxiban (assuming such a person had the business acumen and starting capital), you’d see the revenue and profit of foreign run buxibans collapse overnight. Also, who would then work for anyone else? Likewise, with pizza shops, if/when Taiwanese figure those out (if they haven’t already), you’ll see the kind of stiff competition and low margins associated with plenty of other industries in this country.
The point is that a country doesn’t have a high standard of living and large middle class by following your suggestion. A country has a high standard of living and large middle class when the average person is well-educated and can do a decent, professional job without being trodden into the ground in the process. Yeah, I’ve known very, very successful people (both Taiwanese and foreign) in this country. Yeah, a lot of people in this country (both Taiwanese and foreign) are also lazy and useless. However, the vast majority of people in this country (both Taiwanese and foreign) are being exploited and being trodden under foot and the model of starting your own wildly successful business has probably been tried countless times and failed far more often than it’s succeeded.
Whole Lotta Lotta: I suspect the Taiwanese thirty-something women earning six figure (per month) incomes living at home are a real minority. What’s probably much more likely to be the norm is an average income of say, 25,000-35,000NTD/month for a woman of that age who has realised that even if she does get married, it’s probably going to be to a guy on not that much more than her, and they’ll never really be able to afford to have a family. I know lots of Taiwanese earning above the average here (but not by that much) who don’t live particularly extravagent lifestyles and they either don’t have kids or can only afford one. My kindy co-teacher, when I first came to Taiwan, told me she could never afford to have her own kids unless she married someone rich, and she was realistic enough to know that wasn’t going to happen. There’s something really screwed up about that I think.
Feiren: I’d hardly say NTU is a great university then, if it’s ranked 115th in the world. How easy is it to get into though, anyway? The studying kids do at junior and senior high school here blows me away. No wonder so many university students are burnt out. Without getting into NTU or one of the other top universities, what are the rest of the universities like? If you took an average state university in America, how would that compare, for instance? The tuition fees may be low, but is it a case of cheap and nasty?
Which makes one wonder why Taiwanese waste so much money on tutors and buxibans? What is the return on their investment? It seems like one would end up earning 20,000-30,000NT no matter if you studied a day in your life or not. As for Taiwanese that earn more, is it a result of education or just having a head start due to money from their parents to open their own business or their natural abilities.
[quote=“Feiren”][quote=“GuyInTaiwan”]
It’s certainly better than what the average person gets here, but that’s not saying much. If you plan to have a family it’s not really a living wage unless you also plan to send your kids to a fifth rate Taiwanese university (because even the best universities in Taiwan don’t rate anywhere near anything that any employer elsewhere in the world would take seriously) and have them support you in retirement (which, for a buxiban teacher is much earlier than 65).
[/quote]
I think you are underestimating the quality of Taiwanese universities. National Taiwan University is ranked 115 in the world in the Times Higher Education World Universities Rankings. It would probably rank higher if the faculty had received their primary education in English. It has many distinguished alumni who have gone on to excel in many fields all over the world. Of course many have higher degrees overseas, but the point is that they were in no way handicapped by having been educated in Taiwan first.
If your kids can get in, you will also find it to be a great deal. NTU’s tuition and fees are less than NT$60,00! That’s 20% of the fees you were quoting for Melbourne. It’s a great example of how Taiwan works. Reasonable quality at a great price.[/quote]
Like you, I have trouble with foreign residents with no personal experience at a Taiwan university making statements like this. When I hear remarks like this, what I hear is something about poor colored people and how nothing they do could be any good. I think it’s a racist remark. There are many individual programs and professors here that are world-class.
You are referring to the Time Higher Education World University Ranking. In fact, the ranking is constructed in a way that is biased against schools that don’t use English for instruction. This is the reason why universities from HK and Singapore dominate their top ranks. But if you look at the research output and citation rate for Taiwanese schools, they are higher than many schools that have a higher overall ranking.
By the way, National Tsing Hua University ranks the highest in Taiwan at 107
timeshighereducation.co.uk/w … p-200.html
higher than University of Iowa (one of the top testing schools in the world), University of Victoria and Simon Fraser University (in Canada), University of Liverpool, and University of Illinois - Chicago
But most of the students there are white, and that didn’t get factored into the rankings.
One can not disparage Taiwanese universities too much. Many universities have professors with Phds from the same university that the University of Iowa and the University of Victoria (Canada) do. So for some reason Guy In Taiwan believes that those Taiwan universities are completely inferior.
One can not disparage Taiwanese universities too much. Many universities have professors with Phds from the same university that the University of Iowa and the University of Victoria (Canada) do. So for some reason Guy In Taiwan believes that those Taiwan universities are completely inferior.[/quote]
To be fair to GIT, he’s not the only one with no understanding of the situation shooting their mouth off about it. It’s a common enough statement here and on other forums. But it is wrong.
[quote=“GuyInTaiwan”]cfimages: It will be a problem if you ever want to send your kids abroad to study. It will also be a problem in retirement unless you’re living fairly frugally now. I’m actually really torn about whether to stay in Taiwan or move abroad. As I wrote, I actually do like where I live right now.
[/quote]
I’ve never seen the point in slaving away for years just so you can retire one day in the future. Seems ridiculous to me. Make your work/career/job something you’d be doing for fun anyway and retirement isn’t an issue. I make a living as a photographer. If I didn’t need to earn money, I’d still be doing basically the same thing.
steelersman and ScottSommers: Okay, try getting a job anywhere in the world with a degree from an average American university and an average Taiwanese university. Furthermore, the world is hardly beating a path to the doors of Taiwanese universities. Yes, there may be some foreign(-educated) professors and foreign students at average Taiwanese universities, but the world is not beating a path to the doors of those institutions. America, the U.K., Canada, etc. are still the places people aspire to go to. People can call it racist if they like, but that’s the reality.
As for a return on investment, I seriously question that too. I’ve known/met/worked with quite a few people whose parents sent them abroad to study, especially English, and they seem to be on, at most, 10,000NTD/month more than other people doing the same or a similar job. Yet their parents dropped 1,000,000NTD or a lot more in the process. If they’d invested that instead, their kids could be well ahead instead.
cfimages: You’ve found your passion. Many people haven’t, and won’t ever, or they think they have and see it get worn down. My wife used to be extremely passionate about drawing/design, but her final year of group work and picky professors really killed her passion for it. Any lingering passion was definitely killed after talking to her ex-classmates who went to work in the field.
When I first became a teacher, I thought this was something I would/could really get my teeth into and make a difference. It’s not now. I still get occasional urges in that direction, but less and less, fewer and fewer. Yet I have absolutely no idea what I would do instead. Also, in terms of hobbies/interests, I would say I’m not really into or good at any one particular thing. I like lots of things and I’m okay or slightly better than average at them, but by no means good enough or interested to make a living from any one thing.
[quote=“GuyInTaiwan”]
cfimages: You’ve found your passion. Many people haven’t, and won’t ever, or they think they have and see it get worn down. My wife used to be extremely passionate about drawing/design, but her final year of group work and picky professors really killed her passion for it. Any lingering passion was definitely killed after talking to her ex-classmates who went to work in the field.
When I first became a teacher, I thought this was something I would/could really get my teeth into and make a difference. It’s not now. I still get occasional urges in that direction, but less and less, fewer and fewer. Yet I have absolutely no idea what I would do instead. Also, in terms of hobbies/interests, I would say I’m not really into or good at any one particular thing. I like lots of things and I’m okay or slightly better than average at them, but by no means good enough or interested to make a living from any one thing.[/quote]
I’ve never met a person that doesn’t have some talent or passion. I have however met plenty who have given up on it, or decided it was too hard, or decided they were worn down, or let others bring them down, or found some other excuse not too persist with it. Those that do persist often end up successful simply because they didn’t stop.
Oh, I think we can give GIT the benefit of the doubt. He’s just indulging in a bit of hyperbole.
But GIT, you should heed what Scott is saying. The national universities are far better than ‘fifth rate’. NTU is co-ranked with the University of Hawaii and utranks UC Riverside and Indiana University. Those are are all very good American state universities.
As for getting into them, they are selective. Nonetheless, that selectivity is greatly skewed by the unfortunate competition to get into medical school and electrical enginerring programs. Other departments are also very good and much less competitive. There are about 70,000 undergraduatess at Taiwan’s top five national universities, so there are about 17,500 seats. 140,000 students take the college entrance exams. So 12.5% get in. That’s pretty competitive, but by no means impossible. There are also another six top national unis out there.
Every year I read in the paper about students who got perfect scores on the admissions test say that they did NOT got to Buxibans. Instead, they read a lot outside of class and generally had supportive parents. Just because most Taiwanese parents act like idiots, doesn’t mean you have to.
Finally, Taiwan has several affirmative action programs for kids from ‘remote’ areas like Taitung county. No, you don’t have to be an aborigine. You just have to attend an local public high school. So if you stay in Taitung, your kids have a pretty decent chance of going to a national Taiwanese uni if you can’t afford to send them to the school of your choice in Australia.
Taiwan’s educational system has many, many problems. But if I have ever learned anything, it is that education is what you put into it, not the name brand. If your kids are interested, they can get a quality education in Taiwan.
Actually Taiwan university education is extremely cheap. I pay about CD$1000/ year for tuition. It’s true that my dream school would have been NYU, but the cost of that is insane. I have colleagues who went back to the USA to do their doctorates. They will graduate broke and without a job. Nor are they going to be more employable than I will be.
How would you know? In fact, I have spoken with the chairs of academic departments at universities in Australia and Canada about this. Let me quote to you a real case. Mark Harrison is the deputy chair of Chinese Studies at the University of Tasmania. I asked him straight out, would you hire someone with a PhD from a school in Taiwan. He answered, “Absolutely.” In fact, he told me he has interviewed such people and would have hired them if he could have. So let me put this in my own way, you don’t know anything about this and this is just a feeling you have based on your on-the-street impression of schooling in Taiwan.
In case you’ve missed it, the USA is falling apart. No one is getting hired in In fact, I would guess there’s a higher rate of quality employment among Taiwan university graduates than from any schools in the USA, except for the very top ones. University professors in the USA and Britain are being fired and having their pay reduced. Tell yourself what you want, though.
[quote=“GuyInTaiwan”]steelersman and ScottSommers: Okay, try getting a job anywhere in the world with a degree from an average American university and an average Taiwanese university. Furthermore, the world is hardly beating a path to the doors of Taiwanese universities. Yes, there may be some foreign(-educated) professors and foreign students at average Taiwanese universities, but the world is not beating a path to the doors of those institutions. America, the U.K., Canada, etc. are still the places people aspire to go to. People can call it racist if they like, but that’s the reality.
[/quote]
A graduate of the University of Indiana or Hawaii with good grades is not going to have trouble finding a job. English speaking graduates of Taiwan’s top universities are much in demand for management positions at multinationals in China, especially if they have also studied in the US. The world may not be beating down Taiwan’s doors, but Taiwanese are going out in the world and succeeding both in multinational Taiwanese companies like Quanta and in western multinationals.
And there are plenty of white collar professional Taiwanese making well over NT$300,000 a month up here in Taipei. Most went to national Taiwanese universities (especially NTU) and then did an MA/MBA overseas. These are bright and motivated people of course.
Feiren: Yes, I was indulging myself with some hyperbole, as I always do.
Those admission rates don’t seem to bad then. I certainly don’t intend to send my kids through buxibans here. I’d probably prefer to either homeschool them or perhaps send them to an international school, though that would require us to move and/or spend a considerable amount of money. The two things that I really dislike about the high school education system here are 1) it has a really heavy workload (I see my junior high school students struggling by the ninth grade), 2) it’s ROTE based and test driven. Is it necessary to go through that in order to get into universities here? How would doing something such as the I.B. compare or be accepted? I say that because I think the I.B. is a vastly superior system to what I have encountered here, and also in Australia and would prefer my kids to do something like that.
cfimages: I’m serious when I say I don’t have a talent or passion other than learning generally. I don’t think that’s a bad thing. I would much prefer to be erudite than a specialist, but it doesn’t necessarily make one successful in a world requiring specialisation. I find such people more interesting to meet and talk to also, and I aspire not to be someone who could be a boffin at a party, but someone who could hold any number of conversations. Like I said, there’s lots of stuff that interests me and I’m perhaps a little better than average at, but it would bore me to tears to sit down and get really, really good at one thing rather than decent at three. There was a time more than a decade ago when I spent several months practising guitar five to seven hours per day, but I just couldn’t keep doing it. It was too much for me and there’s no way I could ever have become a shredder, for instance. These days, my technical abilities are much worse than then and I play far, far less, yet I feel more musical than before and I enjoy it more. I’m hardly going to take the world by storm as a famous guitarist though. I could say the same about a whole lot of other things that I was into at one point or another, and still am into. I just really don’t understand how anyone can be so singular about anything.
Scott: Of course. That’s why when you go to a campus in the West, you can’t move for the international students, but at Taiwanese universities, the international students stick out like sore thumbs.
As for employability, go and ask someone in most industries which country they’d prefer their employees to have degrees from. Maybe in engineering, Taiwan might even edge out the West. In virtually any other faculty though, they wouldn’t. Again, people line up around the block to get into a business school or dental school in the West, but people don’t come from all over the world in massive numbers to attend universities here.
Feiren: I have no doubt that there are bright and motivated people here in Taiwan. I’ve met some. I think we can talk about motivation in a very specific sense though. Are the kids who have to grind through massive amounts of information for tests motivated? Probably not in the usual sense of the word, yet would I call them unmotivated? I don’t think so. It must be really hard getting through the education system here. Perhaps the best way to describe them is having a high pain tolerance, but even then, everyone has a burnout point. The point I was originally making way back whenever in this thread is that I think this path is unsustainable (demographically, economically and politically). The average adult in this country is running flat out on a treadmill and we’re seeing the results of that certainly in terms of fertility rates and child rearing practices.
Prior to coming to Taiwan, I would say I was pretty right wing in my economic/employment views, but the longer I’ve been here, the more I’ve moved away from that. As much as I may regularly engage in hyperbole about lazy, stupid Taiwanese, I actually feel really sorry for most of them because I think the middle class is really getting a hard time here and people here grow up in a system that actively discourages free thought and speaking out. It will be very interesting to see what happens when the current crop of teens and twenty-somethings are in their late thirties and forties though.