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Q: Will University pay increase?
Howdy. I have worked at the same university in Henan for several years and normally get a 5% pay increase each year. I've been considering leaving for good but at the same time wondering if pay might increase given our current situation. My opinion is that the school will do what it normally does, which is not plan for disaster (in this case not being able to get Western teachers) and then try and deal with the problem after the fact. I'm hoping though they might anticipate having problems and thus offer more. Any experience with this or thoughts?
3 years 33 weeks ago in Teaching & Learning - China
you are 'hoping that the uni might anticipate problems', and you have been working in China a few years???
One thingi learnt in China is that they never anticipate more and a few hours ahead, and can always change their mind (and not tell you) at the last minute.
the sort of forward planning that you are talking about, in my experience, does not happen in Chinese univerisites.
also, they tend to look for the cheapest alternative possible, experience notwithstanding.
by all means give it a go, asking for an increase, and let us know what happens (like anyone ever gives an update on this site) 
unless you have good guanxi, you are liklely to be told that your 'performance review was poor', and they are sorry (ha ha) not to renew your contract.
by all means good luck!
Sandnose:
Indeed, it seems lots of foreign teachers still think it is 2001 when FTs were a hot commodity. Those days are gone, especially since covid19. Plus, the cat is out of the bag and every man and his dog knows that FT classes are edutainment for disinterested bored students who spend the class playing with their phone at best and a pointless waste of everyone's money and time routinely.
OT:
https://www.zerohedge.com/geopolitical/high-profile-australian-citizen-t...
China Arrests High Profile Australian Citizen & State TV Anchor Under Mysterious Circumstances
WangNan2020:
Cut-and-paste dude busy spreading World Conflict News before finishing his grammar lesson plan for the 3:30pm class. ^_*
icnif77:
No, I want to warn laowai citizens that they can also be arrested just for about anything. I also want to expose Chinese who they really are.
IMO, Chinese should manage life by themselves without help of foreigners. 
I started to decouple from China in 2017 ..
After 11-years in the classroom, there is not much to plan. Just have a class ...
Anyway, why do you still think, you are tall enough for me? ... i.e. remember ''just read and quit blabbering ..." suggestion?
WangNan2020:
Your life happiness comes from your career achievement, good sex and helping others. Exposing Chinese people isn't gonna help that. *_^
icnif77:
I am just saying, NangWan ... about happiness of other people living in China ...
Never mind my happiness, I repeat ... happiness of others forced into submission by Han...
https://www.bbc.com/news/world-asia-china-53981100
https://news.yahoo.com/thousands-ethnic-mongolians-protest-switch-072741054.html
The New Uighurs? Mongolians Protest as China Moves to Erase Local Culture
Tens of thousands of people in an ethnic Mongolian region of northern China have joined rare protests and school boycotts against a new curriculum they fear will wipe out their minority culture, residents said Tuesday.
The sudden policy change in Inner Mongolia means all ethnic minority schools in the remote region will now be required to teach core subjects in Mandarin rather than Mongolian, echoing similar moves in Tibet and Xinjiang to assimilate local minorities into the dominant Han Chinese population.
"Almost every Mongolian in Inner Mongolia is opposed to the revised curriculum," a 32-year-old herder from the Xilingol League area surnamed Hu told AFP, warning Mongolian children were losing fluency in their mother tongue.
"In a few decades, a minority language will be on the verge of extinction."
Tensions flared across the vast grassland region bordering Mongolia and Russia after the policy was announced by the Inner Mongolia Education Bureau last Wednesday.
Mass demonstrations involving parents, students and ordinary citizens have erupted across the region, according to video clips provided by residents to AFP, while thousands of students have boycotted classes.
In some clips, scores of uniformed students can be heard shouting in Mongolian: "I swear to death that I will always learn my mother tongue."
"There are at least tens of thousands of people protesting across Inner Mongolia," said Baatar, a 27-year-old herder in the Hinggan League area who refused to give his name because of security concerns.
As of Tuesday, several bilingual boarding schools in Hinggan League and nearby Tongliao city were surrounded by hundreds of paramilitary police to prevent children who were already enrolled from leaving, Baatar added.
Several parents were beaten and arrested by police late Monday during a demonstration outside his sister's school in Horqin Right Front Banner, Baatar said.
AFP's calls to local bilingual schools went unanswered.
Locals said parents also faced widespread pressure from police to send their children to school, with pupils threatened with expulsion if they did not attend.
- Bilingual curriculum -
Enghebatu Togochog, director of the New York-based NGO Southern Mongolian Human Rights Organization, called the protests a "civil disobedience resistance movement" that has spread throughout Inner Mongolia.
"The whole world is talking about human rights, but we are not visible enough," he said, adding that the imposition of Mandarin and the majority Han Chinese culture on minorities in Inner Mongolia was a form of "cultural genocide".
The area is home to more than four million ethnic Mongolians -- around 16 percent of the region's population.
"Parents are refusing to send their children to schools that use Chinese as the only language of instruction," he said.
WeChat messages and photos of petitions against the policy written in the traditional vertical Mongolian script have been mass-censored by authorities in recent days, he added.
The Inner Mongolia Education Bureau did not respond to faxed requests for comment.
It claimed in a Monday post that the number of Mongolian-language teaching hours remained unchanged.
It is the only region left in the world that uses the traditional Mongolian script, as neighbouring Mongolia adopted the Cyrillic alphabet under Soviet influence.
For decades, the region's bilingual curriculum for ethnic minority schools offered a full range of subjects taught in Mongolian, as well as Mandarin, English and Korean classes.
Herder Hu said that he and many other ethnic Mongolians had become fluent in Mandarin while preserving their native language.
On Monday, dozens protested in the Mongolian capital Ulaanbaatar against the Chinese policy, while thousands of Mongolians campaigned online in solidarity with their neighbours.
icnif77:
https://news.yahoo.com/xinjiang-mongolians-protest-china-moves-090210365.html
The snapback came right before the start of the academic year. High school pupils, many wearing their school uniforms—blue and white track jackets with loose-fitting blue pants, worn by public school students all over the country—formed crowds and chanted,
“Mongolian is our mother tongue! We are Mongolian until death!”
The gatherings were peaceful. As of Tuesday, police officers were on site mostly to observe the protests. 
icnif77:
Help? No, but your advice as
"Might help if you approach the HR person in your uni and chat about the hiring situation?" ... will certainly help.
Most of us on Board were considering sending of smoke signals ... to HR.
Have a look in the mirror instead, you pretentious ...
WangNan2020:
So you assume all the HRs is gonna sabotage you so you put yourself on their opposite side? ^_*
Doubtful but it really depends on your situation. Universities usually have a rigid pay structure and if you have hit the cap or are near it you are very unlikely to get any more money. If you ask for anything beyond that they are likely just to accept your tendered resignation.
It depends on how much you currently make. If you are already making 20% more than other similar positions you can forget it but if you are being uderpaid you have a good chance.
As you know, universities always pay less than other levels of education, and kindergarten teachers are paid a premium. That said, uni teachers do not have to work the standards 20-22 hours a week. It was also noted within this past week that China might allow foreign teachers to begin doing part-time wirk with the agreement of your full-time employer and the part-time one. I have seen an increase in salaries eing offered as schools scramble to fill their remaining teachers slots at the last minute. Beginning salaries jumped from 800-12,000 to 18,000-23,000 within the last month. ESL education is nothing more than a business, even at public schools. Supply and demand seems like it should make a difference, but in China, it is only for emergencies.
doubt it,,,, let us know.
maybe covid bumped salaries overall,,, but I bet they feel like they have already 'got' you and things will carry on as normal. I mean they will not factor in covid in your situation. Well,, let us know.
you are 'hoping that the uni might anticipate problems', and you have been working in China a few years???
One thingi learnt in China is that they never anticipate more and a few hours ahead, and can always change their mind (and not tell you) at the last minute.
the sort of forward planning that you are talking about, in my experience, does not happen in Chinese univerisites.
also, they tend to look for the cheapest alternative possible, experience notwithstanding.
by all means give it a go, asking for an increase, and let us know what happens (like anyone ever gives an update on this site)
unless you have good guanxi, you are liklely to be told that your 'performance review was poor', and they are sorry (ha ha) not to renew your contract.
by all means good luck!
Sandnose:
Indeed, it seems lots of foreign teachers still think it is 2001 when FTs were a hot commodity. Those days are gone, especially since covid19. Plus, the cat is out of the bag and every man and his dog knows that FT classes are edutainment for disinterested bored students who spend the class playing with their phone at best and a pointless waste of everyone's money and time routinely.
"Any experience with this or thoughts?"
My thoughts are... There's no way to predict how some random manager in a random university will react to a new situation, I suspect it will be different wherever you go.
But, while I don't work in China now I have a lot of friends who still do - most of my best friends there are in managment positions in English schools now - and I had several job offers not long after covid was declared a pandemic and people realised finding new teachers was going to be a nightmare. I obviously won't be taking any jobs there, assuming I ever decide to, until the borders open again.
What I know is this... Since the borders were closed most schools can only recruit teachers from within China, this has meant a shortage of teachers and some have quit jobs they had been in for some time to take new, better paying jobs. It wouldn't surprise me if some were actively headhunted.
Despite tough times for schools teachers I know have been very well looked after and some have had unexpected pay rises, presumably to keep them from jumping ship for a better paying job.
The jobs I was offered were paying more than the pre covid deal, they knew they had to offer more.
I don't know how much your university values having foreign teachers or how their system allows for management to adjust salaries as needed but I'm pretty sure there are jobs out there if you look and some are willing to pay more than pre covid rates to get teachers.
If I were you I'd casually tell a co-worker I was offered a great job in city X and maybe after your contract there finishes ... when it gets back to management (and it probably will) you might find you get offered more to stay.
https://www.chinalawblog.com/2019/06/do-not-teach-english-in-china-and-w...
Do NOT Teach English in China and Why EVERYONE Should Read This
By Dan Harris on June 19, 2019
POSTED IN CHINA BUSINESS, LEGAL NEWS
If you are thinking about taking a job teaching English in China, my strong advice to you is DON’T DO IT. Just don’t. Look for such a job in Vietnam or Thailand or Japan or Spain or the Czech Republic or really just about anywhere else in the world. I say this because teaching English in China has become that corrupt, that horrible, that exploitive, and that risky.
Let me explain….
Our international lawyers have always gotten a steady stream of emails from English teachers in foreign countries who are in trouble or not getting paid. Though these matters are invariably too small for us (or just not the sort of work we handle), we do want to help to the extent we can. That “help” usually consists of an email providing “fly-by” legal or career help or even emotional support. We view helping these teachers as a bit of a public service.
In International Education: The Emails We Get, we explained how our international lawyers have inadvertently found themselves on the front lines with this, even though we have never made a single cent from representing an English teacher anywhere in the world.
A couple years ago we wrote a four part series on establishing an international school in China.
In part 1, Establishing International Schools in China: The Basics, we discussed the complications foreign parties typically see when trying to start a school in China.
In part 2, Establishing International Schools in China: A Deeper Dive, we focused on what it takes to start a School for the Children of Foreign Workers.
In part 3, Establishing International Schools in China: A Deeper Dive (Continued), we discussed Sino-Foreign Cooperative Schools and Chinese Private Schools. In this, my last post in this series, I look at future trends for international schools in China.
In Part 4, Establishing International Schools in China – Future Trends, we wrote about some of the distinctive issues foreign schools face in China. We also sometimes write about the legal issues stemming from teaching overseas. See e.g., Teaching English In China: Be Careful.
Many of our lawyers and staff attended international schools or are sons or daughters of teachers or professors. I spent my junior year of high school at Robert College in Istanbul, a year studying Spanish at LAE Madrid, and 8 months studying French at the Institut de Touraine. All three are amazing schools and these were some of the best years of my life. My father taught English Literature at a liberal arts college for 36 years. Our law firm has a long history of representing universities and international schools on their international legal work, ranging from helping them set up in foreign countries to licensing technology they’ve developed to foreign companies.
Our writings and our legal work and our various international school connections mean we get 10-20 emails every month from people teaching around the world, roughly be divided into the following four categories:
Visa issues.
Employment contract issues.
Medical and landlord issues.
Starting a school issues.
...more ...
nashboroguy:
While this is a nice advertisement for the law firm and their work they are doing, it did not give any real reasoning why people should NOT work in China. Yes. There are dihonest schools and employers in China. This can be said in any country. That is because there are dishonest people throughout the world looking only for money and power. In most cases, teachers in China are paid fairly and on-time. They are usually taken care of, as their contracts describe. Maybe I and my teaching friends have been lucky in the eight years I have been in China. I have heard the horror stories, but I have heard far more great, successful stories being a teacher in China.
icnif77:
The lawyer's advice above is ''Don't take an English teaching job in China!". I fail to see the Law firm's advertisementI!
A lawyer experienced in legally protecting laowai is telling you "DON'T TEACH ENGLISH IN CHINA!" ...
It looks to me, the Law firm is losing clients with this 'advertisement' ... c&p above is approx.1/3rd of the whole blog.
I am glad, you have/had a nice experience at English teaching in China.
I on the contrary didn't!
IMO, the main reason for that might be I worked as a non-Native Englisher. The thing is, I rarely heard or read about Native English would describe similar experiences in China as I had.
That's what the Law blog above describes, I had lived through in China. The Board here always received detailed descriptions of shenanigans I had in China, so if anybody is in the mood, you're welcome to go through my posts.
I became a semi-expert in Contractual law just because I wanted to teach English in China.
My last contract with Public School in Bijie, Guizhou, which is/was managed under private ownership ...
The school was looking for the Native English teacher ... and after I passed an interview over Skype, I got and signed a contract, which was just a regular contract in China with 9k Rmb salary for 64 classes (50') per month in 9 months and 5k RMB for each in 3 months of holidays. All regular benes as free apartment and return flight refund, free access to School's canteen ... I might miss a few things 'cause that was in 2016/17.
After less than 3-months of work at School, School's Board (owner) issued a Termination notice with the ending of my work in 30-days time. The reason for termination was " ... your classes aren't interesting .."
There were no contract violations from my side, as being late or missed classes, drunk or discussing politics in the classroom, and similar. I respected contract obligations 100% ... in all 8-years of working in China.
Then, we had some discussions with the owner and my call to SAFEA (FEB) followed ...
I was permitted to complete the contract ending in June 2017.
To make the whole thing shorter, ... I was hired for enrolment purposes as there were several 7 - 12 Grade schools in the city and the school with laowai English teacher would get more students ... at the beginning of school year.
I flew to Guizhou from Kaifeng, Henan, with some 3h flight.
Now, imagine a Native English teacher sign the contract with such a school and fly to China from USA, CA, UK, Oz, NZ, SA ... and get dismissed after 3-months of work ... without party's B contract violations ...????
In the end, School refused to give refund for the flight (5k Rmb) as per contract. Not even SAFEA could help me with that.
That's why the blog above is sensible ...
GET OUT OF SCUMBAGGERY IN CHINA!
There are millions of English schools elsewhere around the world ...
Don't go to Russia or Turkey 'cause you'll starve ...
I experienced contractual disputes with every single establishment in China, and I mainly worked at public schools ...
Some great answers here. Put my feelers out yesterday and was met with indifference. I think they have budgets in place and there is not much concern for retaining people or anticipating anything beyond their immediate concerns. At least they are consistent.
