Thorn Tree travel forum

1

sorry, op...no way. You can earn 20-30k baht per month IF you have a TEFL cert. If you teach at an int'l school (which would require a degree at least) you can earn 50-60-70-80k baht. But sounds like you will be unable to get a job in thailand w/ a good enough income.

You hurt my feelings...both of 'em!

2

The main thing is you have a degree .You need also a TEFL ,which you can get in Thailand after a couple of weeks of study .The pay is around 30,000 baht a month ,which i guess is close to $750 ,but leaves you nothing to live on .

Now in Thailand

3

Did you say your student loan payment is $750. That seems ridiculously high. You might want to look into Korea to get your massive loans paid off. You can realistically expect to find work at 40,000 baht with a certificate. You are not going to have much luck without one. It only takes a month to obtain, so why not just do it. Japan might afford you the opportunity to get your debt down. Maybe you could look into the JET program. What kind of student loan on a BA costs that much per month? Well, let's find out:

Let us assume it is a 15 year consolidated loan. We can assume a reasonable rate of interest. Let's just use 7%. Monthly compounding gives a present value of $83, 441.97. Goodness ... Where did you go to school? Did you use loans to finance the entire thing at a really expensive private institution or what. Even at $40,000 for 4 years, you would be at $160,000 for the whole thing. Surely, you must have gotten some sort of financial aid or something.

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4

You should have no problems at all. As long as the the dollar keeps sliding against the baht and it eventually reaches 1 baht to $1 then you will have $30,000 a month to live off. You will then be able to pay back your loan. Also never mind getting a TEFL. Why should actually being able to teach stand in your way of teaching. Just go to a school with your BA scroll in your hands and they will give you any job you want. Immigration will also be very impressed and they will grant you citizenship straight away.

5

OP, if your loans are really that high, forget about it. Also, if you don't even want to invest one month, and around 1,500 USD to get trained in TEFL, forget about it. You must think teaching is just something you can walk right into.

In the vast majority of cases, good schools, with good facilities and good salaries, wouldn't consider you without even the minimum standard of qualification. Yes, certs aren't required by the Min. of Ed. (MoE); yes, some schools will look the other way if you don't even have a cert, but for the kind of money you'll require, you'll never find a job that you can live off of in Thailand.

Japan is out of the question just now. Its largest employer of TEFL teachers (NOVA) just went under. It has flooded the market with teachers and salaries are going down the tubes.

If you have only minimal experience, a cert and a degree, you can easily work for 30-35k per month--with health insurance, lots of vacation time and good bonuses. Less than 30k, and you're selling yourself short; more than 35k, and you're most likely in BKK where the costs of living negate that extra 5k.

Int'l schools pay their qualified teachers WAAAAY more than 50-80K per month--especially if hired from abroad.

Get your payments down dude. Those are terrible payments and should easily be brought down with some leg work. Then get the minimum qualifications to teach EFL. You could also consider joining the Peace Corps. You can defer your loans and request placement in Thailand or SEA.

TT is a great site for travel information and the guys who've posted usually know their shit, but if you want real information about teaching in Thailand, you need to go to the Thailand Teacher's Forum. I'd suggest expressing some interest in getting some qualifications though--there are teachers responding to your questions.

6

Thanks for the advice so far - although I sense some sarcasm - no need to respond if you're not going to be helpful.

Losing touch - I went to Bucknell University in PA, which costs $40,000 a year - I had a scholarship for 25,000 but had to take out loans for the rest, so I have 60,000 in loans. Slightly regretting this, but too late now.

It's not that I don't want to get my teaching certificate, I would love to, I just can't really afford it right now.

I figured Thailand wouldn't be the best place to teach to make some money. I am looking more into Japan and South Korea.

Thanks again.

7

NOWHERE teaching is a good place to 'make some money'. People don't go into teaching anywhere to 'make some money'. They go into some sort of commercial operation, not a service profession, instead.

8

Yeah, I have a somewhat similar situation, but my loans are significantly cheaper than that. I am finishing up with American University in DC at the moment in Finance. At the same time, I am taking graduate level course is TESOL which will give me a TESOL certificate. Both of my programs end in May. While I am still unsure about what I will do, I figured it is best to give myself as many options as possible. I am thinking about grad school in Singapore for Financial Engineering. I was looking at the vast amount of finance jobs in Singapore and Hong Kong just this morning which added further to my confusion. I think I will take a year off and teach English while I decide. If I decide to stick with teaching, I will probably go to a higher paying country (ie. Korea) for a few years and pay off as much principal as I can. I will still get time off during the year to go and visit Thailand, and the flight isn't too far.

You should look at the kind of financing you have on your loan! I think the peace corps also allows some loan forgiveness when you complete the program.

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9

Losing touch - I looked into the Peace Corps, and really wanted to do it, but you can only defer your federal loans, and I have a very large private loan, which I can't defer. So that was a bummer. I've spent all summer looking at refinancing my loans and consolidating the best way I could. Right now, I don't have any options to make them better, except to pay off as much as I can now to try to make my payments lower in the future. Unless, being a finance major, you know of things that maybe I don't!

Responses to everyone else - I don't want to go into teaching English to "make money" - I want to go into it for the service aspect and to be able to travel - I eventually want to work in International Development. Unfortunately, I have these horrible student loans that I need to pay off, so in order to do this, I need to get a job where I can make money.

And I don't expect that I can walk into a classroom and start teaching. I know that it is very hard - my mother teaches kindergarten, and I know what she went through when she first started, and she has her Masters in Education. I would really like to take a TEFL course, I just don't know if I can afford it, so I was just toying with the idea of trying to get a job without one. I have looked at some schools that spend some time training you in the beginning (like AEON in Japan) that don't require you to have a teaching certificate.

10

Well, Korea doesn't require the TEFL. I don't look into Japan very often, so I have not yet heard of NOVA going under. There are some middle eastern countries where some money can be made. You can make $10 an hour in Cambodia which will only realistically allow for a $300 payment per month if you want to have any kind of life. Vietnam might allow you to make a little bit more. The advantages of Korea are the free accommodation and the airfare reimbursing. Be very careful when selecting a job in Korea if you aren't there. There are some really lousy operations there from what I understand. This reimbursing is contingent on you completing the contract which can be a big expense if you are on a budget. If you are used to living on a budget, can eat the local food, don't drink too much, and are careful ... you can probably earn enough in Korea. Get some experience, pay off the loan, and travel around.

International development can be a hard field to break into. Have you considered grad school? AU and SIS are great schools for this. However, you will probably incur quite a bit more debt. They were very good to me in terms of financial aid at the undergrad level. How do you intend to break into that field out of curiosity? I used to want to major in that which is a major reason I selected AU, but I decided the job market was terrible and difficult to break into.

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11

teaching can be useful as a stepping stone in, when what you really want to be doing is something else. An Irish journalist - only 25, but with experience - friend has just started teaching in Japan. What he's earning isn't breaking the bank, and while he's enjoying himself immensely, what he's really interested in doing longer term is breaking into the media somewhere in Asia. But that's easier said than done. The important thing is that he's here and that he's in a much better position to sniff around for something better, and something better suited to what he really wants to do, in Osaka than he was when he was in Dublin.

12

Yo Cho,

While your heart is in the right place and you seem to be jai dii, your advice is erroneous and therefore not helpful.

You don't make "really good" money teaching in Thailand--any experienced teacher will tell you that.

Having only a degree will not easily bring you a salary of "35k/month".

You cannot get a job "anywhere" with only a degree and TEFL cert. An int'l school will laugh you out of their office without qualified-teacher status.

To say it's "harder" to get a teaching job without a degree is quite an understatement. You also fail to mention that it is illegal to teach without a degree and you can be incarcerated/fined/deported for doing so--at a shockingly frequent rate recently too.

You are "sure" the OP will "do fine" in "international schools". That is simply terrible advice. Int'l schools are the creme de la creme of the teaching industry. People work long and hard to get qualified to teach in those schools. Someone without even a TEFL cert has zero chance of obtaining a job in those schools.

I have never heard about "BKK looking for female teachers". Female teachers are however, sought after for teaching young learners. Are you aware of the teacher shortage in Thailand? Are you aware how few TEFL applicants are female? BKK looking for female teacher...ha, ha, ha (555).

I'm not a "hater" and you can check my previous posts for proof. My advice here, and above, is serious and not meant to be spiteful in any way. It comes from 4 years of experience teaching in various capacities in Thailand. No, I'm not the be-all-end-all of accurate information, but I'm not a spring chicken either. Take it or leave it.

13

you will not earn any money. add to this the cost of: certificate, getting to/from thailand, clothes, visas plus daily expenses.

it is a total loser. thailand asks the most and pays the least of any country i am aware of

you have been warned

having said this - yes, pretty blond female teachers willing to take on brats can make a living - or make a fortune teaching korean businessmen.

14

if you get caught you will be in serious trouble. this whole crack down on long-stay persons is aimed at people like you.