What does “equal” mean in this case? If teachers are excluded from decision making organs of the university, like various types of committees, then that is wrong, but one cannot expect anything other than the national language to be used. Again, decisions made there are legally binding, and must be expressed in the local language. Are teaching loads the same? Salary?

I guess my question is what is legal and illegal there? There must be laws about discrimination and labor conditions. What are they? This shouldn’t be a discussion of fair or unfair. What do the laws say, and do the teachers have a leg to stand on. If not, then it is time to be honest about that, too. In the end it may not matter though. In the case of the teachers at my former employer who took the public university to court after a long process of community building, the teachers lost the case regardless of the fact that they were being illegally discriminated against. The judge just ruled that the state could do anything it wanted to as long as it was in the interests of the people.

I know of a case in Japan where the professor was quite fluent in Japanese, quite fluent in political manipulation, and generally aggressive all the way around. He made inroads, and eventually became a faculty chairperson, and maybe even an assistant dean, but I think he was an exception.

If Korean universities wish to achieve international status, the creation of positions like this in universities will be a necessity. Actually, the positions already exist; it is a matter of having an open hiring system, which is dedicated to hiring the best person for the job, and not merely the best person of local nationality (though, I note here, Canadian universities are obliged to give preference to Canadian applicants. I don’t why a similar position can’t be taken here, as long as it is understood that the goal is to hire the best person.)

Will never happen. Being a university professor is an outstanding way to make a living: very high social status, decent salaries, and very humane working hours relative to comparable occupations. With so many Korean applicants clawing for the brass ring, there is no need to increase competition by opening up to foreign nationals. Foreign faculty will never be more than globalization window dressing.

In other words, usually between two countries enjoying diplomatic relations, there is a tit-for-tat insofar as things like visa fees, number of cars allowed for registration, number of persons allowed full diplomatic credentialling…

I can see a situation in which a visiting Korean professor at say, Berkley, is treated no better than a grad student TA, -and maybe worse, depending on how well his home institute treats foreign instructors.

I think this sort of treatment would be very fair.

Bunch of phonies, all of them. They pay ghost-writers (like me) and then come back to Korea and act like kings. Kings of crap island. Well done.

I now work teaching content classes (e.g., Research Methods) in a graduate level teacher education program which transfers credit to universities in the US and Australia (and were negotiating an agreement with a British university). The program is at one of the universities noted in the article as being better in its treatment of foreign professors, and I believe that is so, compared to some of what I’ve read above. But it is far from what it could be if I and my colleagues were actually treated as equals.

First, on the language issue, I agree with Robert that Korean is a reasonable choice as the working language of departments in Korean universities. I have an American friend from my grad school days who is tenured at Waseda in Japan. She is expected to participate in faculty meetings and departmental and university committees in Japanese, which she does. Her ungrammaticalities and infelicities are forgiven in return. (She has noted to me that sometimes after she speaks in meetings, a Japanese colleague will speak after her, re-stating what she said in more appropriate form. As she puts it, “This is what the barbarian meant to say:”) I don’t see this condition as an outrageous requirement.

Obviously, if foreign professors are just expected to be here for three or five years, without hope of permanence, there is no incentive for them to learn Korean. Positions have to be open for them to receive tenure and move through the promotion system, and the conditions for this in terms of teaching, research, and service have to be clear. The conditions of work in terms of teaching hours and environment also need to be equal.

If Korean universities wish to achieve international status, the creation of positions like this in universities will be a necessity. Actually, the positions already exist; it is a matter of having an open hiring system, which is dedicated to hiring the best person for the job, and not merely the best person of local nationality (though, I note here, Canadian universities are obliged to give preference to Canadian applicants. I don’t why a similar position can’t be taken here, as long as it is understood that the goal is to hire the best person.)

With increasing demand for course work in English, both from external raters and from students themselves, there should be more openings available that qualified non-Korean speakers might be eligible for.

The benefit of all of this to Korean universities is the actual fulfillment of their claims to globalization. This will be one part of meeting the standards set by international raters for higher status.

Of course, there will be resistance from those whose position will be threatened by these changes. But the changes are necessary for Korean universities to meet their stated goals. And most of the young Korean PhDs that I have met at conferences locally and internationally understand and support this.

As for my own position, it has a number of advantages, such as housing off campus, not sure of the pyeong, but three-bedroom by western standards), and reduction of teaching hours by half every third cycle (1 cycle equals 2 terms, equals 5 months).

My pay is good, but not comparable to what a Korean professor of equivalent qualification would be getting if my job were a real departmental position. There is a small research stipend provided each year, but again, no real access to the many pots of research funds on campus beyond this.

But most negative is the lack of respect. I don’t see it as personal — I get on well with the Korean director of my program, but more programmatic in itself. The work in our program is called academic, but is viewed in a more mercenary way by the university. And, as appropriate for a profit-oriented program, it is not housed in a department, but in the hakwon. And the result is that my colleagues and I are often treated as hakwon teachers in a professional sense.

There is a kind of schizophrenia to it. We are in a respectable academic program and are valued for that, but at the same time, we are seen as glorified, well-paid, perhaps overpaid, hakwon teachers. We share an office (and fight over the aircon), are excluded from meetings that directly affect our work, learn things by accident, and are seen as people whose workloads can be expanded at will, but who still must perform their primary teaching function to a high academic standard.

I suspect that when the program was founded, there was no expectation that they would get someone like me, who works as a real academic and expects to be treated like one. Instead, I’m sure they envisioned getting temporary people or folks who got PhDs, but weren’t productive in a research sense… and since the whole thing was just as much about making money, let’s put it in the hakwon.

I’ve been pushing, gently, to change this, but my sense is not hard enough (things haven’t been bad enough to make me want to risk my contract, and I have some things I’m doing here - editing a professional journal that I’d like to continue), but having read the article, I think I should probably start pushing harder.

Sorry for the long post, especially since it is my first here, but this topic is close to my heart.

Besides the phat salary i have an excellent private office (the one long used by the senior Korean professor whom i replaced when he retired, in fact), nice furniture and computer and etc. No housing like the “visiting foreign professors” get tho, because Korean professors don’t get any.

I’m subject to the new strict standards of Journal-publication requirements in order to keep the job and get promoted, as well as the other Korean standards for community service, conferences and associations and such (fortunately, posting on the M-Hole is a community service!).

Because of me my colleagues started holding Department meetings in English, i told them that they don’t need to, but they say they’re happy to because it’s good opportunity for practice for them — a good attitude. College and University-wide gatherings are of course all in Korean, but i’m pretty happy to ignore those anyway. After them my friends tell me what was discussed, and it’s almost never anything that interests me.

I’ve made it clear that i’m keeping out of all political infighting and just not participating in the seonbae/hubae game at all, and so far everyone seems content to leave me out of those. Department Chairman position rotates among the professors according to seniority, and they tell me that when it’s my turn i’ll serve in that position just like anyone else — but i really don’t want to waste my time with bureaucracy and will seek an excuse to avoid it if possible. I just want to concentrate on my research and teaching, and so far that’s going fine…

Probably because her current students are more mature.

Cute, IHBB, but actually it was the students who were the most pleasant aspect of the job.

And that, too, is probably wrong, but I’m not sure if it applies here. The Palisades Park Chamber of Commerce is Korean-dominated. Most Korean universities, including English departments, are dominated by Koreans. If foreigners dominated a particular department and wanted to conduct their meetings in English, French, Hausa or whatever, we might have an analogy.

By using Korean, formerly majority, now minority the non-Korean speaking members are essentially driven out of the organization. Nearly all of the Korean members could probably speak some English, even if they weren’t fluent.

A Peace Corp vet told me that there was
a rule that if a non-English speaking local was around, they all used the local language to include everyone.

I don’t have a problem with faculty meetings being conducted in Korean, but it would be a courtesy to invite foreign teachers and provide at least some summary in English. Becoming fluent in a foreign language takes years, something you know firsthand. As good as my Korean is, I know I wouldn’t catch everything without some clarification.

ESL/bilingual faculty meetings in both districts I have worked for use English as the primary language, but there are sidebars in Spanish. Our school also provides interpretation at evening functions. We are not required to do this. We do it because we want the non-English-speaking parents to feel a part of the school community.

“We” versus “we/they”