English Teacher Brain Drain

By Korea Jim

With news of NOVA in Japan closing its doors (an English language academy chain) and the changes in Korean immigration policy, foreigners are flooding to new areas of Asia. Japan and South Korea, known to be the most lucrative English teaching countries, are now loosing many of their more experienced foreign teachers. Nova has let go of hundreds of their foreign teachers and now the teachers are faced with either returning home unemployed, or trying to quickly find a job in another country. Some distressed teachers have responded to Nova’s closing in online forums. One teacher stated “Originally I had my heart set on Japan, however, with the news of a major school like NOVA closing shop, with little or no warning to its employees, think again. How can such a large school just let all its students and employees go without any form of protection…” Granted, not every Language school in Japan is having financial difficulty, but news like NOVA is not giving a good name to Japan’s ESL market.

Next to Japan sits Korea, known for hiring thousands of ESL teachers every year. However, with new strict visa procedures hiring teachers in Korea will be more difficult. For expatriates of some countries it will take over a month to organize the appropriate documents, i.e. Police Check, Medical History Check, University degree, transcripts and proof of alumni. Further, teachers who have not taught for more than 8 months are required to have an in-person interview at the nearest Korean embassy nearest to their hometown. Experienced teachers with years of teaching will unlikely want return to their home country and wait for anywhere from a week to a month or more for the appropriate documents. Few will also want to wait unemployed. Public schools and smaller private institutes will not be able to afford sending these experienced teachers to their native countries and pay for hotel or rent plus their monthly salaries. Schools will find it more feasible to let the experienced teachers leave and find new inexperienced teachers to replace them, or refuse to hire foreign teachers in general.

If you now look through the Internet online job boards you can see such a variation in teachers. However, one distinction that differs from just months ago, where people use to write “absolutely no China” or “Only Korea/Japan” you now see people requesting Thailand, Laos, Vietnam, Taiwan and other countries. One teacher wrote in his application “Looking for work that will sponsor new visa process and salary over 3 million won.” Countries such as Thailand, Vietnam, and Taiwan may not pay as much in monthly salaries, however, teachers can find work without having to return to their home country and can easily change jobs if their employment becomes endangered.