Day 3 of China teachermaxxing job hunt

[Orientalist]

Universities have zero career potential from the perspective that you'd want to do one of three things:
A) Become a career teacher. No K-12 schools will care that you taught at a university in China.

Hm I just find this point a bit surprising. Surely it's better than nothing, especially for things like meeting the whole "2 years of experience" they throw at you sometimes? Sure you have less administrative tasks related to working 8-5 at a school, but is this teaching in and of itself not the most difficult and quite similar to teaching at a high school? Would you say for the purposes of applying to high schools that it's significantly less relevant than experience at a primary school? And how do you know this?
(I just now realized you probably meant internationally/teaching back in the US. Makes sense. But what about staying in China?)

Shit offers. Scam. Press them with all the relevant questions regarding Z-visas, additional duties, etc. and you will watch the charade unfold.

What even are the typical scams though? I see wayyy more people arbitrarily lambasting them and their gray area status than actually giving specific examples tbh.
Especially the ones without office hours. What are they going to make you do? At ones with office hours they might make you mine coal or assemble smartphones if you're not busy teaching

 

[Orientalist]

Good offer. The question is whether you want to be in Wuhan. And where in Wuhan. Also whether that salary will support your lifestyle.

It's in the top 5. It might be an underrated choice. It's in the top 3~5 of cities in China with the highest university-age populations (thus there are a more university jobs). So dating should have a lot of options if you're around that age, and the vibe of being in a "young city". Good food, plenty to do, etc.

22-24 hours is absolutely whack though so I'm pretty confident I won't take that. I'm mainly just gonna beeline for CD/CQ and see what sticks tbh.
High school is really the best of all worlds and probably what I'd stick with long term (if it was my only income source etc.) but they seem to be the most competitive out of all the job types, even more so than universities

 

[Emoticon]

Be willing to expand geographically too.
Having little experience means that looking at multiple countries is a good idea.

 

[Orientalist]

Be willing to expand geographically too.
Having little experience means that looking at multiple countries is a good idea.

I wouldn't cry if I was forced to live and work in Vietnam, but it's the only thing that really even comes close to China in terms of moolah potential, unless you're a baller international teacher that can write your own check, in which case certain places like Korea become more more viable

I might take this Wuhan offer tho

 

[Orientalist]

So are you allowed to slay students

 

[SonOfZeus]

So are you allowed to slay students

If your students are of legal age you can technically slay, but it would be unethical/unprofessional due to the power imbalance in the teacher-student dynamic. I've heard stories though, both from my uni and others abroad, about professors getting sexually involved with students, and in some cases, even marrying one.

 

[Orientalist]

If your students are of legal age you can technically slay, but it would be unethical/unprofessional due to the power imbalance in the teacher-student dynamic. I've heard stories though, both from my uni and others abroad, about professors getting sexually involved with students, and in some cases, even marrying one.

Your uni in the west?

 

[Orientalist]

And for those who don't know, the campus housing still sux the vast majority of time. AFAIK employers are legally obligated to offer either housing or a stipend, and universities are the former 99% of the time. Imagine taking a girl back from the club and all your students/coworkers see you walking around with her, the guards at the gate who you see every day have to check her in, etc. etc. Not really something you can ignore lol.

Can't overstate this ngl. Does the feeling of weirdness having girls check into your hotel ever go away? If they don't care I don't care but finding somewhere that's chill about stuff like this seems to literally all be a matter of luck. Trial and error.
SOMETIMES universities do give you an off-premise location, but def don't count on that. Maybe it's also possible to negotiate out of them for just a measly stipend if you tell them straight up you'll rent a place whether they like it or not, in the event that maybe the one they gave you is limited or something, the other ones are shared, etc. But I think that's at least slightly sus.
It also feels a bit wasteful having 2 places lol. Would be a bit schizo treating your campus housing as some quasi-office but whatever. I'm sure there are some logistical advantages

Is Wellcee leegit for estimating apartment prices? It's looking like in Wuhan places within the first 2 rings only start to get decent in the 2000-3000CNY range. Which is aight I guess; about what you expect for a NT1

For the record I'm going through all this trouble looking for jobs with low hours because I have an online gig set up that may or may not work out but I want to at least try. In the event it does, I'll just get a place fosho. Having an extra few hundred $+ of supplemental income is the key to the universe if you otherwise want the work-life balance at a university, because then you actually start to save money easily

 

[AlexBrown84]

Is Wellcee leegit for estimating apartment prices? It's looking like in Wuhan places within the first 2 rings only start to get decent in the 2000-3000CNY range. Which is aight I guess; about what you expect for a NT1

no

a lot of the listings on wellcee are years old and not available

use this site

【58同城 58.com】昆明分类信息 - 本地 免费 高效

 

[Orientalist]

no

a lot of the listings on wellcee are years old and not available

use this site

【58同城 58.com】昆明分类信息 - 本地 免费 高效

Mogger. They even look significantly cheaper on this

 

[AlexBrown84]

went to meet with the guy that offered me a job

waste of time. nigga wants me to work 1 hour outside of the city

fuck having a slave commute of two hours a day just to earn $40 an hour

i’ll just cozy max in the city center, take one on one chinese language classes for $10 an hour at university, read books all day, and order food on meituan, while taking slaycations once a month since these chinese girls want duke dennis, not me

 

[Orientalist]

went to meet with the guy that offered me a job

waste of time. nigga wants me to work 1 hour outside of the city

fuck having a slave commute of two hours a day just to earn $40 an hour

i’ll just cozy max in the city center, take one on one chinese language classes for $10 an hour at university, read books all day, and order food on meituan, while taking slaycations once a month since these chinese girls want duke dennis, not me

Fuark
Yeah something like that and it's basically off the table since tbh living China really truly shines when you walk out and you're in the center, because obv sometimes there are at least suburbs still with dense population
I might have an offer at a uni 1hr outside Chengdu at 龙泉山脉 lol. Don't know is something like a 20-40 minute split would be worth.

 

[AlexBrown84]

Fuark
Yeah something like that and it's basically off the table since tbh living China really truly shines when you walk out and you're in the center, because obv sometimes there are at least suburbs still with dense population
I might have an offer at a uni 1hr outside Chengdu at 龙泉山脉 lol. Don't know is something like a 20-40 minute split would be worth.

come to china quickly, i have no one to converse with on the topic of geomaxia

 

[Rance]

Hm I just find this point a bit surprising. Surely it's better than nothing, especially for things like meeting the whole "2 years of experience" they throw at you sometimes? Sure you have less administrative tasks related to working 8-5 at a school, but is this teaching in and of itself not the most difficult and quite similar to teaching at a high school? Would you say for the purposes of applying to high schools that it's significantly less relevant than experience at a primary school? And how do you know this?
(I just now realized you probably meant internationally/teaching back in the US. Makes sense. But what about staying in China?)

The "serious" schools that require 2 years of experience will require those 2 years of experience in K-12 education. There's no doubt the university teaching will help, but for these types of international schools it often comes down to what's on the paper. I know this because I lurk in the teacher circles and because it's often listed on the international school listings if you look carefully. All this being said I'm in the same position as you and more or less just parroting what I've learned elsewhere.

Your university teaching experience will be useful if you want to pursue a career as an academic in China. I don't know anything about that though.

What even are the typical scams though? I see wayyy more people arbitrarily lambasting them and their gray area status than actually giving specific examples tbh.
Especially the ones without office hours. What are they going to make you do? At ones with office hours they might make you mine coal or assemble smartphones if you're not busy teaching

"Scams" usually involve three things, which you may more or less be comfortable with:

• Visa fraud, which is the main way you're even allowed to work so few teaching hours. You often won't get a teaching Z-visa but some kind of "manager" or "consultant" visa. In the unlikely event that the police want to sip tea with you, you'll be deported.
• A ton of travel, usually between multiple training centers. This bumps up the real hours worked per week at least 10
• Auxiliary duties with uncapped time (finish it when you finish it) like selling books, handing out brochures, attending sales events, etc.

It's not as bad as it sounds and "scam" is in the eye of the beholder

Again, this is all on paper for me, I haven't even set foot inside a training center so try to talk to someone who's worked in one for a clearer picture

 

[Rance]

So are you allowed to slay students

FWIW having sex with your students is memed as a "perk" for university teachers in the teaching circles. Lots of university teachers do it and it's not particularly frowned upon.

High school is a clear line in the sand and you'll probably be arrested if you sleep with a student

 

[biggunsar]

Yep, I was thinking about doing this but for Mexico/Latin America. They're not going to be up at 1am to call some Spanish people asking about you lol.
I genuinely have no experience though, so I just don't know how worth it that is lmao. Walking into a job I have NO idea how to do yet and they aren't going to expect to have to give me any kind of training

are you telling me you cannot figure out how to teach people english
1. they are looking for conversational english skills
so....give them that

write down a transaction everyone does and teach them that

hello my name is biggunsar,
hello my name is student
it is nice to meet you student
it is nice to meet you biggunsar

now make your students to that. You show them 1. how to introduce themselves and to say another persons name. Have everyone do that to everyone in the glass. That is easily one days lesson. You could probably stretch it out to 3 days, with additional learning shit.
Infact make it a rule, to come into class you must do it to one person every day. That conversation.
that kind of bullshit

if your students are of age to drink. take them drinking
each student orders a drink in english and must drink in a glass and must use polite vocab in english, Please and thank you

so
I want a beer with a glass please
*delivers beer, "thank you"
now, why is this a great way to learn english or ANY language "i want" is universal. Now all you need to know is the word you want. And you never drink just ONE beer. I am an alcoholic, so after 10 beer i have said it many times. After a week or 2 i am SUPER fluent asking for drinks and glasses and expanding my repore, to other things. And its like memory muscle, you never forget.

if they aren't old enough to drink do it with a glass of water

i want is powerful, becuase if you dont' know the word, EVERYONE can point "yo quiero eso" "aku mau ini" I want that, i want this (spanish indonesian) and point

simple as, i have learned 1 and a half languages with the drinking method

 

[biggunsar]

FWIW having sex with your students is memed as a "perk" for university teachers in the teaching circles. Lots of university teachers do it and it's not particularly frowned upon.

High school is a clear line in the sand and you'll probably be arrested if you sleep with a student

so primary school is out of the questions is what your saying?

damn...no lolis for me (kidding)
just trying to make someone spit out their drink

 

[Orientalist]

(Got a job offer for the uni in Wuhan, and I have an interview with another Wuhan uni that's the classic 12-16 teaching hours, and a few interviews with some training centers in Chengdu and Chongqing...)

I'm crashing out trying to finish all my classes by end of June (~3 weeks after that to receive degree certificate, and ~3 weeks for a Z-visa to fall in my lap AFAIK - mid August, which is the time most of these schools want you there by). Employers seem to be perfectly fine with me not having my degree yet or even showing any proof I'll have it or anything like that lol, I just say I'll have it in July. But I haven't signed a contract or anything yet so I'm not sure if they start to take it more seriously or whatever.

So in the event I gotta bail on these offers since I wouldn't have gotten my Z-visa with them til it's already into September, I'll probably be exploring the year-round training center route. Which is fine by me since I was considering them anyways, especially if it lets me live in a preferred city. The thing is though, like 95% of the listings for training centers I've seen so far had typical school-like hiring periods where they want you August/September.

There are a fair bit of "ASAP" start date listings for all types of schools right now in May, but I dunno, that might just mean they want you ready by around August for onboarding like usual. Maybe those kind of jobs stick around year-round though, since I don't know why you would leave your school in May or whatever if they really do want you there yesterday.
Maybe things will be more clear as we get closer to the actual start of the semester. Maybe some last minute positions hires will show up around July-August from schools that got ghosted, but they'll probably be preferring for people who already have a Z-visa so that they don't have to wait several weeks. I guess that probably has significant processing time too, so whatever. I'll probably be applying to a lot of these while I'm sitting around waiting for my degree to mint.
I'm also just keeping an eye on the very rare October+ start date listings, which I might have landed with a training center in Pidu, Chengdu

Anyways, literally anywhere in China mogs chilling in the midwest to oblivion so I'm not changin my plans and I'll definitely be there by like October at the latest doing something or other. However if the place I end up in sucks balls or something, I'll just stay posted to jump ship to another employer like nothing happened, whether that's some random 'ASAP' listing that pops up or if it's for spring semester intakes in February.
People talk about "blacklists" if you do something fucked up like ditch a place (you're still like legally allowed to leave any job with a 1 month notice or something AFAIK) where employers around the country will just start to ignore you, as if there's some kind of central database HR has - but I have no idea how true that is, especially for training centers barely operating within the law jfl. But maybe they'd be exactly the type to do something like that, idfk

Yeah I think it might be over. Doing some rough math, going from submitting your documents to actually legally working can have a range of like 30 days between fatest and slowest processing times for everything in total, which is cringe with how close it is for me but whatever lol - October start at some year-round place will be like a guarantee for me with no stress.

It seems seeking out these places follows a different meta from the other kind of jobs tho especially after the crackdown; like I said almost every listing of any kind that I’ve seen so for has said “ASAP” or “September” - for the time being at least.

Language center schedule with ~10 hour days on the weekends are gonna suck lol, but my cope is that the ROI of spending a bunch of time clubbing late into the night won’t be as great until my Mandarin is up to speed anyways. The name of the game for now is to become Chinese, Rocky training arc except saying mā má mà mǎ instead of hitting a punching bag I guess

But so yeah indeed the next thing I might want to investigate is how cooked it would be to prematurely end my contract with a place and go somewhere else just in case my employer puts me in a sweatshop, but eh I’ll cross that bridge when I get there

 

[Orientalist]

The Z-visa/work permit process for the curious:

• After all documents are submitted, HR submits your file to the provincial bureau. Takes ~5 days for the pre-approval, and ~10 days for issuance of your work permit notification letter to be issued to you.
• Schedule an appointment (or just walk in, depending on your location) at the CVASC to get the Z-visa stamped in your passport. At least for the one near me, they have 2-day processing so that's cool. Up to 5 days if not.
• After actually arriving in the country, you still need to go on a few sidequests to legally start working. First get a mandatory medical exam. Takes 1-5 days. I don't know if you're able to pay for anything faster to get the results same-day or if it's just luck or whatever. They do a whole gamut of things on you though like X-rays and everything. And make sure it's the standard exam, not some generic check-up. Some employers apparently even want you to do one before arriving in the country, but I think that might just be excessive and you'll have to do the 2nd one in China anyways
• After you give the results to HR showing you don't have AIDS or bone cancer, they can press 'activate' for your work permit application; it'll now be set to 'pending'. SAFEA approval takes up to 10 days at most, but usually 3-5 days. You'll now have your work permit QR code on the 电子社保卡 app
• After you have your work permit you can apply for the Work-type Residence Permit (工作类居留许可). Pretty sure your school often makes the appointment at the public security bureau for you, but you could also do it yourself. You need a bunch of shit but nothing that takes extra processing time besides the aforementioned. Takes up to 15 days, but usually 5-7.
  • JW-201 form you fill out at the counter
  • Passport (+ possibly a photocopy of the photo page)
  • Temporary residence registration slip/accomodation proof. If your hotel is "licensed to accomodate foreigners" they can give this to you
  • 33x48mm photo
  • Medical exam certificate (+ copy)
  • A printout of your E-work permit QR page
  • Employer will give you printed copies of:
    • Employer cover letter
    • Labor contract copy; signed and stamped
    • Business license copy
• You'll get a blue receipt while you wait for the processing and your passport is surrendered - sometimes employers can kind of treat this receipt as an "eh, alright, I guess you could start working now since the deal is basically sealed" but it's still not a legal work permit or anything like that. But after they're done processing you'll have the sticker in your passport - only then can you actually start legally working.
• But also! In some cities, apparently you can apply for the work permit application and the work-type residence permit simultaneously at the same location, and it only takes up to around a week. Certain halls in Shanghai (Pudong), Beijing, Shenzhen (Qianhai), and Guangzhou (Huangpu & Nansha). That could save you up to like 18 days or something worst case scenario

So yeah it's a range of like 26~47 days. Arrive in the country by early August and you don't have anything to worry about really

 

[Orientalist]

Lol wtf, had this interview with a protestant private middle/high school in Beijing that teaches some liberal arts curriculum to like 100 students with 1 other foreign teacher and wanted me to teach like 4 different subjects despite barely having any relevant qualifications, as if anybody could just walk in and do it if they felt comfortable enough. If only this is how most jobs worked, but why me lol. Seems kind of cool but probably a really high workload + Beijing pretty meh

 

[biggunsar]

Lol wtf, had this interview with a protestant private middle/high school in Beijing that teaches some liberal arts curriculum to like 100 students with 1 other foreign teacher and wanted me to teach like 4 different subjects despite barely having any relevant qualifications, as if anybody could just walk in and do it if they felt comfortable enough. If only this is how most jobs worked, but why me lol. Seems kind of cool but probably a really high workload + Beijing pretty meh

dude, google is your friend

how to teach X class grade X

or use fucking chatgpt. fake it till you make it, bro. think of all that highschool puss.

 

[Orientalist]

dude, google is your friend

how to teach X class grade X

or use fucking chatgpt. fake it till you make it, bro. think of all that highschool puss.

Yeah 100%, I don't know shit yet, I'll be using AI for everything. English is easy enough, but you're crossing the line a bit if you have to ask ChatGPT every day to write a new history lesson about some battle in the Chinese civil war and how the glorious communist party won, and then 45 minutes later teach geometry (which I slept through every day in 10th grade because I was sleep deprived from playing CSGO).
Yeah technically anyone could do it since it's always dumbed down, but you better be gettin paid hoe

 

[biggunsar]

Yeah 100%, I don't know shit yet, I'll be using AI for everything. English is easy enough, but you're crossing the line a bit if you have to ask ChatGPT every day to write a new history lesson about some battle in the Chinese civil war and how the glorious communist party won, and then 45 minutes later teach geometry (which I slept through every day in 10th grade because I was sleep deprived from playing CSGO).
Yeah technically anyone could do it since it's always dumbed down, but you better be gettin paid hoe

you plan your day out

and remember, to stretch your courses out. Say you learn about genghis khan today full onstop
the next day, you cover 1/2 day genghis
start learning about something else
3rd day test with basic questions about genghis.
full on day of new material
4th day, test both material
5thday repeat 1/2/3 day

if they ask you why you are repeating lessons. You say, its' memory muscle practice

you literally can make up how you want to teach the bullshit

 

[Orientalist]

Based

 

[AlexBrown84]

View attachment 11090
Based

what’s the context

 

[Orientalist]

what’s the context

A premonition

 

[biggunsar]

View attachment 11090
Based

this is EXACTLY why if your gonna fuck your students use innocent code words

"you want to come over for dinner"

using food is a great Plausible deniability ruse.

did you like dinner last night. First time i tried it. it turned out good

(did you like the sex last night. first time we did doggy style, and it was good)

if you have her repeating your code words, it looks like you are just eating together alot

just saying.

 

[Orientalist]

Some listings do explicitly say they consider non-native speakers. If you’re a blonde htn or whatever you are not SOL. There are also random positions for (native) german speakers if you look at echinacities

Surprising amount of these btw if you have the right WeChat contacts, for all the Europoors on the forum. They're usually in random ahh tier 2/3 cities though, but what can you expect. But it's generally all types of schools. One the off chance anyone wants them I can PM.
And again, there are non-English teaching roles like German, French, Japanese, I've even seen mfin' Filipino or Indonesian. I imagine they probably have a lot of applicants due to their rarity though? Their salaries seem to be the same as those for English

Lol wtf, had this interview with a protestant private middle/high school in Beijing that teaches some liberal arts curriculum to like 100 students with 1 other foreign teacher and wanted me to teach like 4 different subjects despite barely having any relevant qualifications, as if anybody could just walk in and do it if they felt comfortable enough. If only this is how most jobs worked, but why me lol. Seems kind of cool but probably a really high workload + Beijing pretty meh

International school actually. 99.99% of them out there want a master's or US teaching license, but it's not a legal requirement. Due to the size I guess they take what they can get. I don't know if they're super poor though considering the tuition per year is like $150k if I'm reading this right jfl, unless that's some mistranslation from 150k CNY.
Clicked well with the staff but I still can't believe they give a fuck about me - I guess they just like my high-Openness and eloquent character which I thought was sorta the bare minimum, but whatever:
There's basically 2 kinds of interviews:
1. You're in some huge boardroom with a bunch of staff/teachers asking you questions and everyone looks like they're dead inside and they try to grill you, just going from one question to the next with literally like zero transition besides them occasionally conversating privately in Mandarin (the only words I recognize is shit like 老师 and 走吧 so I set up speech recognition + auto-translate captions on my computer, so nobody is pulling that shit on me again)
2. Some lady from the school who doesn't seem super busy calls you and wants to hear your life story; the conversation is more informal/chaotic, your soft skills can really come to the surface, and there's actually personality to it, she may or may not call you handsome, etc. etc.
So far, every single time I've heard back from a school after an interview it has been from only one of these types of interviews - you can take a guess which one

 

[AlexBrown84]

Surprising amount of these btw if you have the right WeChat contacts, for all the Europoors on the forum. They're usually in random ahh tier 2/3 cities though, but what can you expect. But it's generally all types of schools. One the off chance anyone wants them I can PM.
And again, there are non-English teaching roles like German, French, Japanese, I've even seen mfin' Filipino or Indonesian. I imagine they probably have a lot of applicants due to their rarity though? Their salaries seem to be the same as those for English

International school actually. 99.99% of them out there want a master's or US teaching license, but it's not a legal requirement. Due to the size I guess they take what they can get. I don't know if they're super poor though considering the tuition per year is like $150k if I'm reading this right jfl, unless that's some mistranslation from 150k CNY.
Clicked well with the staff but I still can't believe they give a fuck about me - I guess they just like my high-Openness and eloquent character which I thought was sorta the bare minimum, but whatever:
There's basically 2 kinds of interviews:
1. You're in some huge boardroom with a bunch of staff/teachers asking you questions and everyone looks like they're dead inside and they try to grill you, just going from one question to the next with literally like zero transition besides them occasionally conversating privately in Mandarin (the only words I recognize is shit like 老师 and 走吧 so I set up speech recognition + auto-translate captions on my computer, so nobody is pulling that shit on me again)
2. Some lady from the school who doesn't seem super busy calls you and wants to hear your life story; the conversation is more informal/chaotic, your soft skills can really come to the surface, and there's actually personality to it, she may or may not call you handsome, etc. etc.
So far, every single time I've heard back from a school after an interview it has been from only one of these types of interviews - you can take a guess which one

what type of questions do they ask in the first one

might get a education masters so i can teach at international schools

 

[Orientalist]

what type of questions do they ask in the first one

might get a education masters so i can teach at international schools

Yeah I'm pretty sure the M.S. in curriculum and instruction is the easiest one but haven't looked super far into it

They'll usually only ask a couple blatant "interview-style" questions like this, most of them being the following, in rough order of frequency (anything else is kind of a curveball which you can maybe wing/have a good idea from experience, or just type into chatGPT on the spot like I've done lol)
- Self-introduction
- "Why do you want to come to China" (tbh idek what kind of answer they expect/want half the time)
- How do you handle students of different English ability
- How do you handle all these fucking kids and keep them concentrated; setting rules etc.
- How do you motivate students who don't care
- General outline of a lesson plan
- Responsibilities you expect to have as a teacher (jfl when I basically couldn't answer this one time)

 

[Rance]

There's basically 2 kinds of interviews:
1. You're in some huge boardroom with a bunch of staff/teachers asking you questions and everyone looks like they're dead inside and they try to grill you, just going from one question to the next with literally like zero transition besides them occasionally conversating privately in Mandarin (the only words I recognize is shit like 老师 and 走吧 so I set up speech recognition + auto-translate captions on my computer, so nobody is pulling that shit on me again)
2. Some lady from the school who doesn't seem super busy calls you and wants to hear your life story; the conversation is more informal/chaotic, your soft skills can really come to the surface, and there's actually personality to it, she may or may not call you handsome, etc. etc.
So far, every single time I've heard back from a school after an interview it has been from only one of these types of interviews - you can take a guess which one

This is dead accurate lmao

In my case I didn't notice a difference in receiving offers between the two types. Although coming out of type 1 interviews I always FELT like I wouldn't get the job.

Another difference is the type 1 interviews always seem to be really short and end abruptly. Whereas the type 2 ones go on and on as we're having some kind of off-topic conversation and joking around or whatever.

 

[Orientalist]

Yeah honestly guys, for anyone going for this you can just try and become a subject teacher ASAP. Get a relevant bachlor's + 2 years of teaching experience, OR a relevant master's OR a relevant teaching license. Good thing the USA is tutorial mode all of that.
As much as I genuinely like languages, TEFL is definitely a meme and there's not really an 'advantage' in not having good credentials if you want something cushy.
Main goal for the first teaching year: best work-life balance possible - in my free time I'll try and get a provisional teacher's license for the next year, namely for computer science (AP, A-level, etc.). Too bad I hate Java with a passion but whatever. A teaching license is generally more valuable than a master's degree.
Teaching or studying "English" is kind of a nothingburger, but meanwhile, computer science is actually one of the most highly-respected/prestigious university majors in China. At least at the high level, I suppose. Up there with medicine and the like at least with younger generations. First thing local people guess as for what an expat they meet does for work is usually if they teach English - I can therefore imagine that a harder STEM subject would be way less of a failo if at all. Whole different ball game than just walking around speaking your native language jfl

In terms of pay/demand, I guess it's something like: Computer science > Physics > Math ≥ Other sciences ≥ Business, finance, etc. > English and other humanities (psychology, philosophy, etc.) > EFL. Honestly man I don't know what's gonna happen if all the infamously unemployed computer science majors find out about this.

That being said I'm starting to ignore most recruiters to put my mental energy elsewhere - I think I'll just stick with this 11k post-tax 22hr uni job in Wuhan unless any other university offers come my way. While 22 hours kind of sucks, at least it's 11k after tax. Not sure I'd take 16 hours and 9k unless I had a side hustle

 

[Rance]

Yeah honestly guys, for anyone going for this you can just try and become a subject teacher ASAP. Get a relevant bachlor's + 2 years of teaching experience, OR a relevant master's OR a relevant teaching license. Good thing the USA is tutorial mode all of that.
As much as I genuinely like languages, TEFL is definitely a meme and there's not really an 'advantage' in not having good credentials if you want something cushy.
Main goal for the first teaching year: best work-life balance possible - in my free time I'll try and get a provisional teacher's license for the next year, namely for computer science (AP, A-level, etc.). Too bad I hate Java with a passion but whatever. A teaching license is generally more valuable than a master's degree.
Teaching or studying "English" is kind of a nothingburger, but meanwhile, computer science is actually one of the most highly-respected/prestigious university majors in China. At least at the high level, I suppose. Up there with medicine and the like at least with younger generations. First thing local people guess as for what an expat they meet does for work is usually if they teach English - I can therefore imagine that a harder STEM subject would be way less of a failo if at all. Whole different ball game than just walking around speaking your native language jfl

In terms of pay/demand, I guess it's something like: Computer science > Physics > Math ≥ Other sciences ≥ Business, finance, etc. > English and other humanities (psychology, philosophy, etc.) > EFL. Honestly man I don't know what's gonna happen if all the infamously unemployed computer science majors find out about this.

That being said I'm starting to ignore most recruiters to put my mental energy elsewhere - I think I'll just stick with this 11k post-tax 22hr uni job in Wuhan unless any other university offers come my way. While 22 hours kind of sucks, at least it's 11k after tax. Not sure I'd take 16 hours and 9k unless I had a side hustle

One reason I chose to be a subject teacher was for social clout lol. I know it sounds better to be a statistics teacher than it does to be an English teacher. At the moment I get a lot of messages on Tandem to the tune of "so you're coming to teach English?" and I love chirping back with "nah I'm coming to teach STATISTICS".

I'm technically qualified to teach any mix of statistics, business, data science, economics, finance, etc. While I'm serving my time as a high school teacher I may look for university jobs like yours, but in data science.

That being said I do think you're overthinking the gap between English teaching and subject teaching. At the end of the day the pay rate is similar and there can't be a serious discrepancy in career opportunity. Subject teaching is a niche to hit particularly if you are qualified for teaching a subject because it will boost your salary by a couple thousand RMB and get you more offers, plus the little halo effect, but that's about the extent of the advantage I think.

 

[Orientalist]

That being said I do think you're overthinking the gap between English teaching and subject teaching. At the end of the day the pay rate is similar and there can't be a serious discrepancy in career opportunity. Subject teaching is a niche to hit particularly if you are qualified for teaching a subject because it will boost your salary by a couple thousand RMB and get you more offers, plus the little halo effect, but that's about the extent of the advantage I think.

True - it’s basically only a matter of thousands in terms of salary.
What I was getting at tho and kind of neglected to mention is just the fact that being qualified for several different high-demand subjects = could be double the job opportunities. That, in practice, might get you a position way better than what you may have gotten only looking for English positions, just out of “luck”. Whether that be salary/location/etc. This is especially relevant earlier in the career, and later, at the ‘top tier’ schools, I think the salary gap between certain subjects might begin to manifest more, rather than having to go for some some prized hyper-competitive TEFL role
I only made rough “tier list” because some of subjects definitely are oddballs. Like ah yes, we need a Korean-speaking music teacher. But sure, the tl;dr is mainly to go for STEM