About 15 years ago I was teaching at a university in southern Taiwan, with an MA. I applied directly to roughly a dozen universities in the Taipei area, and all rejected me, all saying they only hired PhDs. A year later I applied to the same schools, plus a few more, and one accepted me. So that was over a decade ago - I assume getting a job is tougher now.
I applied whether or not they had openings listed. If I recall correctly, the places that hired me didn’t even have posted openings.
Note that the part-time uni jobs are not good. You’re paid by the hour, roughly $600 - yet you’ve got to plan a course and do marking as well. Most cram school jobs pay roughly the same per hour in the classroom, and involve a lot less outside-the-class work.
I don’t think you’ll find anything in Taipei. Maybe a decade ago, but not now. Most of the upper-tier universities require a PhD nowadays. I only have a Masters like you, and I got a contract full-time uni teaching job in Kaohsiung at a private uni. You’d have better luck down south in Kaohsiung, Tainan or Taichung.
How do you find a uni job? Well, unis don’t usually advertise on job boards (and don’t even bother with recruiters or headhunters…they’re scum of the Earth and will try to pass the worst cramschool jobs off on you, no matter who you are). Check the university websites. There’s usually a notice around February to April (so now!) advertising jobs for a fall semester start. It also helps to know people. Networking is easier said than done especially if you’re a natural introvert like me, but a lot of people get jobs based off of friends recommending them to the director. It’s not the easiest thing to land a sweet uni gig, even if you’re qualified. A lot of it boils down to timing, luck, and how many other applicants you’re competing against. Good luck!
There are still positions out there in Taipei for people with just an MA. The universities would prefer to hire someone with a PhD, but since the salaries are too low most of those people go elsewhere. Getting a job at a public university is probably harder but public universities are still hiring. I started part-time about 18 months ago after I saw an ad on a facebook english teaching jobs page. After a while they told me that they wanted me to come on board full-time. Not long after that the associate dean tried to hook me up with another position at a different university. And, I also just hooked up with a once a week teaching gig through another university that had posted on one of those FB pages.
Having connections and doing a good job make a huge difference. I want my students to learn something and I make an effort to engage with them in ways that most of their other teachers don’t. People notice this because, in my opinion, many teachers don’t do a very good job. I’m not saying that I’m perfect and I definitely could do better, but there is a tendency for many teachers (both local and foreign) to just stand in front of the class, lecture for 2 periods and that’s it. They don’t care if the students get it or not. One could argue though that the system here does sort of promote this style at times, but that’s a different story.
Anyhow, subsribe to all the FB english teaching pages, go to the different universities and apply. You never know.
You’re very lucky. I haven’t heard of many people landing a full-time gig at a public university in Taipei with only an MA (even if it started out as part-time work).
As always, be the guide on the side, not the sage on the stage.
Sorry, I meant I found a full-time position at a private university and not a public one. That said, I did meet a guy who got a part-time teaching job at NTU. A terrible teacher and how he managed to wiggle himself into it is a mystery. He taught one class at my current university and then was politely asked to go elsewhere.
I am an absolute newbie to Taiwan but in my last job (Saudi Arabia) I was only teaching two classes a day (i.e. 10 hours per week). But then, I have a PhD. BTW, I’m now looking for a uni job ANYWHERE in Taiwan and I’ll happily teach the classes everyone else hates, ha ha!
So the general advice I’m getting re landing a uni gig teaching English is to scour university websites for jobs - but what if the website doesn’t have a jobs page? Eg, National Taiwan University of the Arts ( http://m.ntua.edu.tw/ntuaen/index.htm ) is a uni I’d love to work at (given my phD and Masters quals are in media arts and creative writing) but I can’t find a relevant page on their website. Grrr.
Honestly, I don’t know. In the current environment, it’ll be very difficult. I have a Master’s in Education. I was lucky to get a full-time position in 2016. I just heard this year that my school is no longer hiring full-time workers who don’t have a PhD (they are still taking on part-timers without one though). Things are getting hairy nowadays, as there are less incoming students due to a birth-rate decline. I will say your luck will be much better OUTSIDE of Taipei and at a private uni.
Over 10 years teaching ESL here, in the USA, and in South Korea. TESOL certified, Master’s in Ed. Bachelor’s in English Lit. Good references and past student evaluations on hand to show employers.
I’m sure I’ve mentioned this before, but again and again I’ve taught “awful” students in an 8am class, only to teach them in later semesters at a more reasonable time and discover they were actually quite good: they just suck at mornings.
I think it depends on the person. If you’re the kind of person who stays up staring at your flat thing until 4am, you’re not going to learn much in an 8am class. Unless you get 7.5 or 9 hours of uninterrupted sleep per night, you’re not going to learn much at any other hour either. It boggles my mind how little sleep people get here. A few power naps during meetings and while in class cannot make up for the biological need to get sufficient sleep. If you have an 8am class, need to commute for 45 minutes and need 15 minutes to get ready in the morning, you need to be in bed at with the lights off and your phone off at 11:30 at the latest, earlier than that if you don’t hit the pillow and immediately fall asleep. Most people I know are out until that late or later, and their small children that need to go to school in the morning aren’t getting the message that bedtimes are important either…
So yeah, if, as a society, there is the consensus that going to bed “early” is “stupid”, then it’s a bad idea to have classes early.
At my first uni job in Korea, classes started 7:15 am for the EMI classes. The Korean professors didn’t want to teach early, so they told the administrators to give us foreign teachers the crap morning slots.
