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Bargaining for free uni course


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Posted

Promise this will be the last question for a while :D

Long story short,

Using google translator, I did some blagging to see if unis with particuarly poorly translated English websites would go for the idea of giving me free tuition and accomodation in exchange for me editing their english language items on their website and also helping academics/students with English.

To my surprise, the Dean of the International College at Shanxi Uni emailed me the next day interested in the idea! He's out of the country until February so I'm to get back then with my resume and passport copy when he'll take it to rest of the team.

I'm going to send a clearer proposal letter at the same time explaining how indispensible I'd be, but in terms of hours per week working, how many would be reasonable to offer them for tuition and accomodation, but no stipend?

Posted

Sorry to say, but I'd be very surprised if this ever came to anything.

You say you are using Google translate, which suggests you don't know Chinese. That would mean that, at best, you can only tidy up and 'correct' the more glaring errors in what has already been mistranslated.

The college is always going to be able to find someone who knows at least some of both languages, and will use them instead. The college president or party secretary probably has a niece who walked past an English school one day. That will do!

The sad fact is that most don't care if the English is correct or not. It is only there for decoration.

(I'd also suggest you check your own English before offering to correct theirs!)

Posted

I think I've said this before in the context of English teaching, but it applies here also. You're better off paying for your course, and getting editing / teaching / shoe-shining work off your own back when you get there. You do not want to get into an employer-employee relationship with anyone other than an employer - not your school, not your landlord, not your aunt.

Things that could go wrong:

They have no work for you for a month - and then want you to go away as pet foreigner for a weekend. They decide to farm out 'their' hours to some dodgy English school. They have no editing work, so decide to have you teach English to some random bunch of teachers who don't want to learn English. Etc. You want to be able to walk away from employers when they start to take liberties - you can't do that so easily if you work or study with them.

Plus you'll pretty much always end up getting paid less. Keep your work / study / accommodation eggs in different baskets.

  • Like 4
Posted

Roddy is 100% correct. I know at least several people in Beijing who have jobs or internships that are supposed to be related either to translation or to something they have a degree in/ are good at (such as economics or environmental studies) and they end up getting sent off randomly at the last minute to Wuhan, Foshan, Nanjing, Shenyang, ETC (those all happened in the last two months to two people I know) and/or they become random westerner sitting at a conference all weekend just to make the university look good (this happens even more frequently). But I think the biggest point Roddy makes is the one about teaching English. If you have offer to do that, expect potentially long hours and/or dropping all your plans at the last minute to help them out, and furthermore it's more than likely they won't give a s**t about your Chinese lessons. I'm serious about that... I know enough people in this situation and it ALMOST happened to me. Luckily I got out of that situation very quickly!

If you're concerned about making money when you get here, I suggest looking for side jobs when you arrive. At the very least, if your English is good, you'll be able to find tutoring and possibly some light teaching work on the side, and even maybe a random job like being that random westerner at conferences on weekends for companies that need you. They'll pay you a one time flat fee for it.

Posted

Agree entirely about wanting to avoid the scenarios Roddy mentions -- though amandagmu, being send off randomly at the last minute to Wuhan strikes me as an entirely desirable state of affairs. B)

Of course, if you fancied teaching English I think some universities will let you attend their Chinese-for-foreigners classes for free if you teach English there, though that's coming at it from the other way around (ie teach English, bonus is free Chinese classes) which means that teaching hours and commitments should all be clearly worked out in advance, as they would with any foreigner teaching English at their institution.

Posted

At first, as I was reading your post, I thought this sounded like such a clever idea! But then I read the posts, and realized that the others are right when they say this is a bad idea. Here's why:

Tuition in China is already cheap, meaning that unless they let you get off doing a very small amount of work (for example, 5 hours per week), you aren't really gaining anything.

To take 20 hours (weekly) of Chinese classes at my University costs about 9000 RMB per semester (about 16 weeks I think). The salary for an unexperienced English teacher in Beijing is around 150 RMB per hour. Therefore, in my case (which I'll use a as an example), the kind of arrangement you described would only actually be beneficial if I worked 4 hours a week or less.

Of course, you said there would be no stipend. I presume you will need to buy things while in China, so you would need to end up finding other work anyways; thus, it's not as if your arrangement would save you that inconvenience.

My recommendation is to just find a gig where you can work two or three times per week (3-4 hours each time), doing either English teaching or editing. That should cover all your expenses. And, it gives YOU control over the situation. (Though, as Liuzhou said, you should probably be a bit more careful when you type.)

Posted

Sorry re:the typo in the heading- I did know it was a misspelling (honestly!) but didn't know about the full edit option at the time ...

Thanks for all the replies. My plan had been to use mainly savings for the living expenses- but I now understand that I'd lose the 'customer' element of being a self-paying student and it could all get rather messy which I hadn't appreciated before.

You've also given me some other options for potential part-time work outside the usual teaching sphere which is extremely helpful, too.

I'm now officially going to shut up, stop being annoying and go to the back of the class until my scholarship application in decided in June.

Posted
being send off randomly at the last minute to Wuhan strikes me as an entirely desirable state of affairs.

Oh, did we say Wuhan? We meant an industrial satellite city of Wuhan. It's ok, the hotel is really nice, can smoke anywhere, and as it's the middle of winter we'll be the only guests. We might drive a minivan up a hill, but apart from that it's basically going to be eating bones and sitting in the hot springs with our hosts . . . yes, those corpulent people over there . . . oh, and some meetings. That'll be mostly speeches though, you can just sleep. As long as your eyes are open, ha ha. Ah, here's Mr Wu's thick nephew, he's got an English exam next week, and so . . . yep, see you later at karaoke - hope you've got all your Chinese songs ready!

That kind of stuff is fun once, in your first year, as an experience. But it gets very old very quickly. And if you want to go to Wuhan or anywhere else, you can actually most likely get a plane or train there.

Even if you end up teaching at the same university, go along to the English department and set up your own deal. It might seem like this will be more difficult, but in the long run you're going to come out ahead. IF you're in a situation where you can't afford your tuition up front then MAYBE, but . . .

And the questions aren't annoying - this is basically what we're here for.

  • Like 2
Posted
I'm now officially going to shut up, stop being annoying and go to the back of the class until my scholarship application in decided in June.

The rest of us learn from reading the answers to your questions. Keep them coming.

Posted

hil-lar-ious, Roddy! Except for that is roughly what happens to these friends every week and/or weekends. I asked the friend who went to Nanjing if he saw any of the memorials - his response? Basically, "No. I saw a hotel and conference rooms and heard lots of boring speeches. On the last day, before going to the airport, they took us to see some famous thing that wasn't so interesting, but there was hardly any time to even take pictures. I wasn't left alone the whole weekend and thus has no free time."

Oh, China! Peter Hessler's peace corps job in Fuling (see book: River Town) doesn't seem so bad anymore, does it?

Posted
On the last day, before going to the airport, they took us to see some famous thing that wasn't so interesting, but there was hardly any time to even take pictures. I wasn't left alone the whole weekend and thus has no free time.

I got taken on a junket to Yantai once - boss was ex-Navy and we walked into this one restaurant and (with Yantai being a big navy town) half the diners recognized him. Cue hours of people coming into our 包间 for toasts. I swear, I still have nightmares about this one guy bursting in, stripped to the (corpulent) waist, red of face, bottle of baijiu in one hand, glass in the other (probably full of water, the cheating git) and yelling something incomprehensible, but that probably meant 'Oooooh, a foreign friend!' And this was LUNCH.

Fortunately I was soon drunk enough that I decided I could fool everyone by going outside to 'make a phone call' and sitting on the curb for two hours with my phone pressed against my ear.

If anyone recalls a less exaggerated version of this story being told a few years back, shush.

  • Like 2

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