There was a time when Japan and Taiwan paid very well for English teachers, with Korea and China taking over as economies shifted. In the middle east I worked with guys who started in the 60s and 70s in Africa, and also guys who moved into eastern Europe after the cold war.
Now, though, with online teaching fully arrived (if not living up to high standards), AI around the corner, markets saturated with more people willing to go overseas to escape hardships, and less jobs in most of the previously stong Asian markets, seems the end of an era.
The factor that brought me here was the shift to Filipino teachers here in Taiwan, but also in Saudi Arabia university ESL jobs are advertised with preference to local candidates. For better or worse, being a native speaker isnāt the job passport it used to be in language education.
A friend was looking on 104 at education jobs and told me there was lots for English teachers in Taiwan. But we know the pay and management mentality are decades behind; with cost of living rising and number of students falling, youād think schools would be competing to get the best teachers so they can attract students, instead of scrimping and limping to the fast approaching end of their business.
So what do you think? Are the halcyon days of high salaries finished globally for ESL teachers? Can there be anywhere left to go but down? Anything Iāve forgotten that also points to this?
Or, anything that suggests the golden age has not passed?
Iād have a hard time calling āGolden Ageā a time where an 18-y-o with no experience or skill whatsoever would get a gig teaching English that pays as much as an engineerās starting salary. Maybe rather āGolden Con Age.ā
Well most werenāt even conning as they did not even need to con. You had white skin you had a job. That was in the 80s though.
Now things are to a much higher standard (without an APRC). No doubt white skin still helps.
I donāt feel bad. The locals conned themselves, they wanted a white face with no skill, there was demand, why wouldnāt people go to teach.
Now they still want a white face but they arenāt willing to pay for it, however there are too many people willing to take the low pay so salaries suck.
Considering the salaries i see from the schools who dare post on here (600-700/hr, 7-12 hrs/week), Iād say you certainly canāt make a living (by which I mean literally be able to pay your rent on a å„ęæ and feed yourself ä¾æē¶s for all meals) on a cram school teacher salary anymore
That being said, Iāve had quite a few schools in the US contact me / beg me to come be an ESL teacher in their district. The salaries theyāve offered have been quite high, not just compared to the average teacher salary. I have a background in linguistics and a teaching license in ESL and have been working in real schools for the past decade, but I get the impression English-speaking places with a lot of immigrants are going to be much better places for qualified ESL teachers than places where English is just an after school program (so anyone calling it āESLā in Taiwan and all non-English speaking countries, sorry, you clearly didnāt learn the industry-specific terminology and are therefore unqualified)
After thirty years, some people still donāt get that. Now the demand is not there apparently.
Saying that, Iām teaching(throwing a sticky ball around some would say) way more than I would like because the place I work canāt find a native speaker anywhere.
ESL is a commonly accepted general term and perfectly acceptable in the context it is being used here. But the pedantic diatribe and debate on what counts as qualified is irrelevant to this thread
Ugh, I hope that isnāt the last best option. If so, can definitely not recommend this career path any more!
Iām not a demand expert by any means but I feel there is the same demand, minus the lower birth rates, but too many people willing to take $500/hr so they just donāt feel the need to pay more. Japan and Korea have similar comments online, ok money but crappy compared to others.
Iāve never met anyone from the west working for those rates. 700 to 800 is the norm. Whether that is a liveable wage depends on how many hours you get and how your schedule looks.
People working 4pm to 9 every day vs people working 9 to 9 with breaks all over the place and multiple locations often have the same take home pay.
Im not saying people arenāt making 700 to 800/hr. Im just saying that the jobs I see posted almost never go that high and the number of hours available dont even qualify most people for a work permit
I can testify that this was true up to the early 2000s too. I had a Russian classmate who taught English solely based on his looks (Viking god), he told people he has a NZ accentā¦
I think we both know the answer. Not just salaries but the quality of the jobs in general.
Iāll only discuss the East Asian market since Iāve never taught anywhere else (not including some language academies in the US). Japan was the first to fall with the collapse of NOVA in 2007. When I was starting out in my early 20s I originally wanted to go there (because ā¦ you knowā¦ Japan), but changed course and went to South Korea when I heard a friend of mine had gone to work one day and found the gate of his school chained up without notice. He was then given a 30 day eviction notice since no one was paying for his housing anymore. Itās a bit forgotten now, but the collapse of NOVA was THE huge ESL story back in the 2000s.
Anyway, Japan tapped out. But Korea is still a good place to work in the late 2000s. After only one year cutting my teeth at a buxiban (known as hagwons there), I actually land a job at a frigginā university! This is when I was 26 with only one year teaching at a cram-school and only having a Bachelorās. Now it was a mid-tier private uni and it was an English program within the uni, but it still had all the same perks of summers off, relative freedom with syllabi, no desk warming, teaching cute uni students (bonus for being a female university). Iām still flabbergasted I could get that kinda job back then. In my 4 years there, things got progressively worse though. Class quality declined, elements of the program were cut, wages stagnated and then actually declined, and eventually the program was cut altogether and yours truly was without a job. This was around 2013. I was told that things had changed and now without a Masterās it was highly unlikely I could work in a uni again. It had happenedā¦ Korea had been tapped out just like Japan before it. So after being morally crushed by working at a public middle school for 6 months, I went to the US to get my Masterās.
I originally intended to return to Korea but there I met my wife, who is Taiwanese and also a teacher here. After completing my higher degree, I arrived in Taiwan in 2016 and was lucky to almost immediately get my current uni position (which I surely wouldnāt have been able to do without a Masterās). I was teaching in academia again, I had my perks back, life was good! Fast forward a few years and I hear that new applicants wonāt be hired without a PhD. This isnāt an elite public uni in Taipei, but a private uni in Kaohsiung. I came at the right time because it seems Taiwan is the next domino to fall in the ESL worldā¦ and itāll probably only be a matter of time before my contract is simply not renewed due to dwindling enrollment (by way of the birth rate collapse).
Whatās next? I hear Vietnam is still popping! Expect that bubble to burst in the 2030sā¦
I think it is for the better, as a parent i invest a lot in my childrenās education, and i want them to be taught by people that have more qualifications than ābe whiteā.
I think the ESL salaries are linked to local economy, Taiwan isnt fast growing anymore, so salaries wonāt suddenly jump up.
Maybe Vietnam is better.
Maybe there is money and opportunity in the private sector there, but I canāt see government schools or universities offering much.
Not really sure. Anyone know anyone in Vietnam? Some time ago RMIT was constantly advertising positions, but given the turnover and low salary I never applied. I did apply for a BC job, but apparently the days on spent on the application were wasted because I used an old version of a document, so I didnāt bother to reapply. But BC is pretty competitive for the average ESLerā¦
Maybe. Anyway, I love the food and culture, but could never deal with the traffic there 24/7. I went to Hanoi once and it made the streets in Taiwan look like āDriving Miss Daisyā by comparison.
all $500 to $650.