I have no idea how much the international schools pay. My adviser in college told me TAS paid NT$200,000/ month, but I also know three different women who have taught there at different times who said it was a living hell for women. I’ve also seen people post on Forumosa saying it’s more like NT$90,000/month at TAS, especially if you’re a local hire. So, from my very limited data, it would appear that salaries have plummeted at TAS while at the same it’s also become primarily local wealthy Taiwanese kids and not really an international school. (People who work there, feel free to dispute this, I’m going off of hearsay)
I have seen an international Montessori school offer US$40,000/ year + US$8,000 in housing, but it’s in Songshan (housing = $$$$) and you need a Montessori license (~US$13,000 + three summers of intensive classes to get)
I applied for a private “international” school once two years ago and they offered me NT$60,000/ month for the first 6 months and then said that I could “negotiate higher pay” after this 6 month “probation period” was over. I laughed in their faces.
Compare this to the MOE pays FETs starting at NT62,000/ month (and going up to 90,000, depending on years experience and highest degree earned plus NT5,000-10,000/ month housing plus NT80,000 x 2 for round trip airfare.
This is cushier than a cram school, but hardly worth it. US$26,000 is barely above poverty line in the US, and lots of states have implemented a $15 minimum wage, which is the official “living wage” in the US. This means that working a full time job that requires some experience and a license in TW pays less than a job that requires a pulse in the US. Cost of living in TW is lower than the US, but once you start looking for a comparable standard of living (quality of food and housing) you’re spending a similar amount).
You’re also out social security pay-ins in the US (if we assume that’ll be around) and will never get the “labor insurance” that you are paying into in Taiwan. So your retirement falls 100% on you, while any practical employer would at least help with 3-6% match.
I’m not saying millionaires teach high school for fun, but I’ve met a heck of a lot of Fulbright English Teaching Assistants, being paid NT$40,000/ month and required to live in crap housing with each other who genuinely believe that this is decent pay because it’s “higher than locals are paid”. After friending them on Facebook, I’ve learned most of them come from incredibly wealthy families who just hop around the globe and partying or doing whatever the heck they want just for fun. Because they’re just here for the one year, they’re willing to do all sorts of unpaid “volunteer” work, because they believe it’s “the right thing to do to help people”. This is things like teaching English to old people, tutoring university students in English writing, English camps for high students, and website translation. They are required to do volunteer work on top of the 20 or so hours of English classes they they teach alone in the public schools, it’s not optional. Not one of these is a job that any self-respecting foreigner would do for under NT$600/hr in pay, yet they these things for free. Thus, local governments are quickly learning that they can get free work out of these native English speakers and qualified teachers (and other native English speakers) who expect to be paid for their work are out a job.
(Speaking from experience on this one. A few FETs and I used to be paid NT$850/ hour cash to run a summer English camp for a local high school, and when Fulbright came in, the school didn’t want us to plan the camp anymore. I asked the Fulbrighters what they were being paid and they very confidently told me that they “couldn’t ask to be paid to do this work!” I went and spoke to the head of the English department at the high school, who I know pretty well, and I got a lot of “well, they wanted to do it” and “you guys have done a great job planning in the past but we wanted to change things up”. (that money? for sure straight to the pockets of the school)
Taiwanese parents will blame their kids first. It’ll take a while before the pictures of white people in the school isn’t enough to convince parents of the “quality” of the school.