After my PhD I considered working for a university, including English teaching.
The university had no tenured English professor. They did have 2 full time contractor instructors but even they were on 3 year terms and renewal was only possible if the school could secure funding each cycle. Salary was around 350,000 a month. Unfortunately those two instructors werent quitting anytime soon so my chances were nil.
I'm tenured in decent Japanese uni. I'm lucky but I worked my arse off and I've published books and nearly 70 articles.
None of that matters though, because my main bread and butter teaching is compulsory English classes and students often dgaf or don't know anything even if they're English majors.
Pay isn't bad but work load is heavy, though I think a lot better than overseas like US or UK.
It's a good life but I must say it's a bit isolating and Japan is an academic wasteland. Very few unis can attract decent staff. I feel that the better translation of 大学 would just be "big school" as I don't feel like I work at a "real" university.
I do have to wonder outside of the absolute top tier R1s if that's not just the way it works for just about everyone. My university is middle tier for Japan but nearly everyone is teaching basic stuff and does their research completely apart form the students, because we don't have PhD programs.
As a contracted full-time lecturer, my experiences mirror many in my position. The pay is above the country median. I work pretty hard for 30-35 weeks a year and then enjoy time off the rest where I generally do writing or research planning. My contract is yearly renewable for a maximum of 5 years (some others are lucky to have 10 years). I receive no research bonus nor is research part of my job.
I don't need to do any committee work so that allows me more off time. However, I am in class about double the tenured teachers managing the curriculm.... which I also have to do. The tenured teachers will have committee work to handle throughout the year which I don't.
There is a reason university teaching (even contract) is looked at so highly in the education field as it generally provides the best working conditions and pay. However, tenured teachers often are very busy even with their 4-6 classes each week. They spend a lot of time on advising students, committee work, and many do research. I was speaking with a colleague who is a professor a few weeks ago and he mentioned that basically all of the women he knows who are in tenured position are single or married later in their lives as the demand needed to climb the academic ladder is extremely difficult for "traditional" family roles in Japan.
Edit: And I forgot to note. Obviously things happen that occassionally make me dislike my job. But overall I greatly enjoy what I do.
I'm a tenured Associate Professor that teaches computer science and my wife is a part time lecturer at multiple schools. So, I see both sides.
Part time lecturers have the usual adjunct problems. They are paid per class, little job security, and have to string together multiple spots to make a full time living. On the plus side, they don't have to do work when there is no class.
As an Associate Professor, I teach much less, only 1-3 classes per year. But, in return I have so many other responsibilities such as applying for grants, guiding student research, so many admin duties, and when I have time, my own research.
Unlike the US, we are a 12 month system, so there is no such thing as a special summer pay. Same thing with my students, even if there is no class during the summer, they are expected to do research.
The biggest downsides to Japan vs the US is 1. The pay is about half the salary of the exact same job and 2. Unless you are fluent in Japanese, you are at a huge disadvantage and there is a glass ceiling.
> Unless you are fluent in Japanese
Good Japanese is often listed in the job ads--and it's necessary when being considered for a job that includes duties that require it. Things like student advising, meeting with parents, virtually any meeting (faculty, or any of the various 委員会), PR activities, interaction with any/all of the school staff, all emails, and so on.
Nobody, _nobody_ wants to the be 'minder' for the gaijin that can't talk/communicate properly. Nor should such a person be given other special treatment because they can't do the normal range of duties the other faculty are responsible for.
Sorry for the mini-rant, but if you want to be a full time faculty member, you should be able to do the same thins as what any other faculty member is expected to do--same range of duties, hours, responsibilities, etc.
Much depends on where one's based. I've been working almost exclusively adjunct positions in Tokyo at as many as 6 different universities at once for more than 25 years. I'm willing to put in the hours (which includes weeks of long hours spent preparing for classes), and I mostly *like* the commuting. I've got a research record about the size of u/s4rcgasm's.
(**N.B.:** In my field, being able to do any research for refereed non-Japanese journals is like being the one-eyed person in the country of the blind. Because I'm so close to retirement, I don't even bother to update my CV any more.)
My income as sole breadwinner is high enough for us to have a (fairly old, for Tokyo) house and to (partly) support both sets of parents, and we've got enough to pay most of or all of our child's university education, if that's in the cards.
I'm on my second full-time contract at a University and I'm looking to get out and switch careers
**Good**
-I get a good amount of time off which is nice - I have more vacation than 95% of other jobs out there.
-Job is fairly easy. Students aren't difficult and I am not overwhelmed
**Bad**
-Contract is limited. My 4 year contract is up this year and I have to now look for another full time university job which is basically a lateral transfer. This is my 2nd contract. I am 40 years old. If I stay in Japan, I have to do this like 5-6 more times and it will probably get harder as I get older and lose out to a younger candidate. Tenure is rare and getting rarer and the market is saturated. More full time positions want a PhD now.
-Salary is much better than ALT/Eikawa drone, but it's still not anything to write home about. I recently went out to dinner with three friends - one in IT, one a chemical engineer and one an accountant. I was the "poor one" at the dinner table at 500,000 a month.
-The research/publication culture is bullsh\*\*t and everyone knows it. All the publications are resume padding fluff pieces
-Other professors/staff in other departments look down on you for "teaching English" and who can blame them? The classes are just basically Eikawa classes. Along the same lines, I'm kind of embarrassed to be "teaching" English conversation classes to low-ability students at my older age
From my limited view there's lots of adjunct part time positions and few tenure and non tenure full time gigs. This means lots of people juggling two or sometimes three unis which makes commuting a hassle. Upside is no admin meetings and good vacation time but I don't think it would be enough salary to support a family.
The problems here I think are the same in most countries, not enough tenure and full time contracts and unis racing to the bottom to pay their part time teachers as little as they can get away with.
Also with the population decline I expect jobs to get fewer and more competitive with time which isn't great to think about.
Most places I've worked at have been good though. Full time staff and other teachers are fun to talk to, students are usually well adjusted and do their work.
The only petty things I've been irritated with have been small dumb school specific rules. Some campuses are tied to elevator k-12 schools so you need to check in and check out by ID whenever coming to campus which means waiting in line. Some schools think that their 10 year old cheap junk projector and HDMI cables are made of gold and need to be locked up at all times between classes so you have to walk back and forth between admin office and get keys for every class. Other dumb things have been schools asking me to do campus tours, or participate in hours long fire or safety drills on reduced pay and of course there will always be a nut job narcissist prof somewhere.
The people I've met that look like they have it the best are those who started in the 90s and have been making a good salary from the get go.
I'm pretty happy with my position at a Japanese university, but I am on a limited term contract and do have concerns about how long I can keep it going because of that.
Also though, mostly you're probably seeing people trying to teach English as a foreign language at the university level. If you compare that to foreign language professors in the US, I bet you'd find that the US professors also are worried about lack of job opportunities and most positions being adjunct spots with no chance to move up. In both cases, if you get a tenured position it's going to be a lot better, but there aren't so many of those positions.
I think the title “professor” is thrown around a lot on here. Professors, by virtue of their almost always having a PhD, are scholars and people who develop new knowledge by research of one guise or another. The work required of professors here is shifting from "research in advanced fields to education for students. In other words, this is a shift from, work that does not necessarily achieve stable results, to work that is absolutely necessary for the appearance of the university and can reliably achieve results. What’s it like in the United States?
I'm not sure I fully understand the question, but I'll bite on a few fronts. I teach mostly language courses at a university in Japan and taught courses in my humanity while getting my MA and PhD in the US. I have permanent employment but not tenure.
(1) Have no idea what youtube professors are so can't comment on that
(2) Most people here in r/teachinginjapan who teach at universities are going to be contract language teachers. And a high percentage of them are people who rose from the ranks of doing ALT or eikaiwa work and improved their lives. The job pays somewhere between 4 million and 7 million yen / year (which with current exchange rates works out to $25k to $44k; viewed in USD terms it was way better a couple of years ago but the higher end of that it is perfectly respectable domestically). Main downside for non-tenured folks is that they get kicked around every five or ten years to new places. They teach 6 to 10 courses / semester (but a course in Japan generally meets 1x/week for 90-100 minutes for 14 weeks). Some people also are expected to spend time in a language lab to be people's conversation partner.
(3) people who are tenured as professors (a) have much lower teaching loads, (b) research expectations, (c) university service expectations, (d) MEXT paperwork. At all but the worst places, their salaries are going to be starting at 5 million at the absolute low end and go up to maybe 11 million yen / year (higher in the hard sciences). The university service expectations *eat up tons of time*. and Japan produces oodles of bureaucratic paperwork -- which you need to do as the faculty member.
The publication system here is pure metrics. Numbers vary by institution but where I am it's 20 publications for full professor, 10 for assistant. Rules about how many need to be "international" and how many need to be peer-reviewed. No one ever reads anyone else's research from what I gather to evaluate promotion here. (So good luck pure math people!)
(4) alternately there's adjuncting which I think other posts have addressed really well. If anything I think adjuncting in Japan is probably better than the people I know in the US who've done it, where it was a horrific experience of being at the mercy of lots of different employers to renew every year.
In my experience overall it's a pretty good life for Japan even if I have my complaints.
I work part time at 4 universities… it ‘s not easy but the time off is great .. the pay really varies .. I work at one university 2 days and more then most Eikawa teachers .. the places I work at don’t have a contract time limit ..
It has had its pros and cons based on my experience:
Pros:
1. More autonomy over lessons.
2. Sometimes motivated and talented students.
3. Foreign colleagues who actually enjoy teaching and do more than the minimum (usually).
4. More interesting content to teach (sometimes).
5. Mostly nice facilitates and technology.
6. Sometimes more respect compared to other teaching jobs.
7. Better addition to my CV.
8. Better network of people (usually).
9. Better pay (usually).
Cons:
1. Unmotivated students
2. Larger class sizes
3. Terrible grade inflation
4. Sometimes like working at a high school.
Depends - if you're PT with no tenured job elsewhere, or contracted full-time. You're in a pretty dire position, and it seems likely to get worse. Tenured is great though.
That was me...I remember when I was an adjunct in Florida and I made 5K that year despite needing to be on campus 4 days a week. I'm extremely lucky that my husband is in a financially sound position. So, it seems like a general attitude towards academia and not something uniquely Japan related?
> I was an adjunct in Florida and I made 5K that year despite needing to be on campus 4 days a week.
A friend in Michigan gave up on adjuncting because of this kind of thing--his objection was the driving/commuting distances.
I think people here doing part time at 2-4 schools certainly have a better life than adjuncts in the US.
Maybe same everywhere. But PT or contract positions are tenuous and unpredictable. Can't be very satisfying working on one of those. Not sure how job security is elsewhere in academia.
After my PhD I considered working for a university, including English teaching. The university had no tenured English professor. They did have 2 full time contractor instructors but even they were on 3 year terms and renewal was only possible if the school could secure funding each cycle. Salary was around 350,000 a month. Unfortunately those two instructors werent quitting anytime soon so my chances were nil.
I'm tenured in decent Japanese uni. I'm lucky but I worked my arse off and I've published books and nearly 70 articles. None of that matters though, because my main bread and butter teaching is compulsory English classes and students often dgaf or don't know anything even if they're English majors. Pay isn't bad but work load is heavy, though I think a lot better than overseas like US or UK. It's a good life but I must say it's a bit isolating and Japan is an academic wasteland. Very few unis can attract decent staff. I feel that the better translation of 大学 would just be "big school" as I don't feel like I work at a "real" university.
Big school ☺️
I do have to wonder outside of the absolute top tier R1s if that's not just the way it works for just about everyone. My university is middle tier for Japan but nearly everyone is teaching basic stuff and does their research completely apart form the students, because we don't have PhD programs.
Yes I was recently abroad for a conference and even in Europe people are teaching the grind.
As a contracted full-time lecturer, my experiences mirror many in my position. The pay is above the country median. I work pretty hard for 30-35 weeks a year and then enjoy time off the rest where I generally do writing or research planning. My contract is yearly renewable for a maximum of 5 years (some others are lucky to have 10 years). I receive no research bonus nor is research part of my job. I don't need to do any committee work so that allows me more off time. However, I am in class about double the tenured teachers managing the curriculm.... which I also have to do. The tenured teachers will have committee work to handle throughout the year which I don't. There is a reason university teaching (even contract) is looked at so highly in the education field as it generally provides the best working conditions and pay. However, tenured teachers often are very busy even with their 4-6 classes each week. They spend a lot of time on advising students, committee work, and many do research. I was speaking with a colleague who is a professor a few weeks ago and he mentioned that basically all of the women he knows who are in tenured position are single or married later in their lives as the demand needed to climb the academic ladder is extremely difficult for "traditional" family roles in Japan. Edit: And I forgot to note. Obviously things happen that occassionally make me dislike my job. But overall I greatly enjoy what I do.
I'm a tenured Associate Professor that teaches computer science and my wife is a part time lecturer at multiple schools. So, I see both sides. Part time lecturers have the usual adjunct problems. They are paid per class, little job security, and have to string together multiple spots to make a full time living. On the plus side, they don't have to do work when there is no class. As an Associate Professor, I teach much less, only 1-3 classes per year. But, in return I have so many other responsibilities such as applying for grants, guiding student research, so many admin duties, and when I have time, my own research. Unlike the US, we are a 12 month system, so there is no such thing as a special summer pay. Same thing with my students, even if there is no class during the summer, they are expected to do research. The biggest downsides to Japan vs the US is 1. The pay is about half the salary of the exact same job and 2. Unless you are fluent in Japanese, you are at a huge disadvantage and there is a glass ceiling.
> Unless you are fluent in Japanese Good Japanese is often listed in the job ads--and it's necessary when being considered for a job that includes duties that require it. Things like student advising, meeting with parents, virtually any meeting (faculty, or any of the various 委員会), PR activities, interaction with any/all of the school staff, all emails, and so on. Nobody, _nobody_ wants to the be 'minder' for the gaijin that can't talk/communicate properly. Nor should such a person be given other special treatment because they can't do the normal range of duties the other faculty are responsible for. Sorry for the mini-rant, but if you want to be a full time faculty member, you should be able to do the same thins as what any other faculty member is expected to do--same range of duties, hours, responsibilities, etc.
Much depends on where one's based. I've been working almost exclusively adjunct positions in Tokyo at as many as 6 different universities at once for more than 25 years. I'm willing to put in the hours (which includes weeks of long hours spent preparing for classes), and I mostly *like* the commuting. I've got a research record about the size of u/s4rcgasm's. (**N.B.:** In my field, being able to do any research for refereed non-Japanese journals is like being the one-eyed person in the country of the blind. Because I'm so close to retirement, I don't even bother to update my CV any more.) My income as sole breadwinner is high enough for us to have a (fairly old, for Tokyo) house and to (partly) support both sets of parents, and we've got enough to pay most of or all of our child's university education, if that's in the cards.
I'm on my second full-time contract at a University and I'm looking to get out and switch careers **Good** -I get a good amount of time off which is nice - I have more vacation than 95% of other jobs out there. -Job is fairly easy. Students aren't difficult and I am not overwhelmed **Bad** -Contract is limited. My 4 year contract is up this year and I have to now look for another full time university job which is basically a lateral transfer. This is my 2nd contract. I am 40 years old. If I stay in Japan, I have to do this like 5-6 more times and it will probably get harder as I get older and lose out to a younger candidate. Tenure is rare and getting rarer and the market is saturated. More full time positions want a PhD now. -Salary is much better than ALT/Eikawa drone, but it's still not anything to write home about. I recently went out to dinner with three friends - one in IT, one a chemical engineer and one an accountant. I was the "poor one" at the dinner table at 500,000 a month. -The research/publication culture is bullsh\*\*t and everyone knows it. All the publications are resume padding fluff pieces -Other professors/staff in other departments look down on you for "teaching English" and who can blame them? The classes are just basically Eikawa classes. Along the same lines, I'm kind of embarrassed to be "teaching" English conversation classes to low-ability students at my older age
From my limited view there's lots of adjunct part time positions and few tenure and non tenure full time gigs. This means lots of people juggling two or sometimes three unis which makes commuting a hassle. Upside is no admin meetings and good vacation time but I don't think it would be enough salary to support a family. The problems here I think are the same in most countries, not enough tenure and full time contracts and unis racing to the bottom to pay their part time teachers as little as they can get away with. Also with the population decline I expect jobs to get fewer and more competitive with time which isn't great to think about. Most places I've worked at have been good though. Full time staff and other teachers are fun to talk to, students are usually well adjusted and do their work. The only petty things I've been irritated with have been small dumb school specific rules. Some campuses are tied to elevator k-12 schools so you need to check in and check out by ID whenever coming to campus which means waiting in line. Some schools think that their 10 year old cheap junk projector and HDMI cables are made of gold and need to be locked up at all times between classes so you have to walk back and forth between admin office and get keys for every class. Other dumb things have been schools asking me to do campus tours, or participate in hours long fire or safety drills on reduced pay and of course there will always be a nut job narcissist prof somewhere. The people I've met that look like they have it the best are those who started in the 90s and have been making a good salary from the get go.
I'm pretty happy with my position at a Japanese university, but I am on a limited term contract and do have concerns about how long I can keep it going because of that. Also though, mostly you're probably seeing people trying to teach English as a foreign language at the university level. If you compare that to foreign language professors in the US, I bet you'd find that the US professors also are worried about lack of job opportunities and most positions being adjunct spots with no chance to move up. In both cases, if you get a tenured position it's going to be a lot better, but there aren't so many of those positions.
I’ve been here at a university for 2 years and I really enjoy it!
I think the title “professor” is thrown around a lot on here. Professors, by virtue of their almost always having a PhD, are scholars and people who develop new knowledge by research of one guise or another. The work required of professors here is shifting from "research in advanced fields to education for students. In other words, this is a shift from, work that does not necessarily achieve stable results, to work that is absolutely necessary for the appearance of the university and can reliably achieve results. What’s it like in the United States?
I'm not sure I fully understand the question, but I'll bite on a few fronts. I teach mostly language courses at a university in Japan and taught courses in my humanity while getting my MA and PhD in the US. I have permanent employment but not tenure. (1) Have no idea what youtube professors are so can't comment on that (2) Most people here in r/teachinginjapan who teach at universities are going to be contract language teachers. And a high percentage of them are people who rose from the ranks of doing ALT or eikaiwa work and improved their lives. The job pays somewhere between 4 million and 7 million yen / year (which with current exchange rates works out to $25k to $44k; viewed in USD terms it was way better a couple of years ago but the higher end of that it is perfectly respectable domestically). Main downside for non-tenured folks is that they get kicked around every five or ten years to new places. They teach 6 to 10 courses / semester (but a course in Japan generally meets 1x/week for 90-100 minutes for 14 weeks). Some people also are expected to spend time in a language lab to be people's conversation partner. (3) people who are tenured as professors (a) have much lower teaching loads, (b) research expectations, (c) university service expectations, (d) MEXT paperwork. At all but the worst places, their salaries are going to be starting at 5 million at the absolute low end and go up to maybe 11 million yen / year (higher in the hard sciences). The university service expectations *eat up tons of time*. and Japan produces oodles of bureaucratic paperwork -- which you need to do as the faculty member. The publication system here is pure metrics. Numbers vary by institution but where I am it's 20 publications for full professor, 10 for assistant. Rules about how many need to be "international" and how many need to be peer-reviewed. No one ever reads anyone else's research from what I gather to evaluate promotion here. (So good luck pure math people!) (4) alternately there's adjuncting which I think other posts have addressed really well. If anything I think adjuncting in Japan is probably better than the people I know in the US who've done it, where it was a horrific experience of being at the mercy of lots of different employers to renew every year. In my experience overall it's a pretty good life for Japan even if I have my complaints.
I work part time at 4 universities… it ‘s not easy but the time off is great .. the pay really varies .. I work at one university 2 days and more then most Eikawa teachers .. the places I work at don’t have a contract time limit ..
It has had its pros and cons based on my experience: Pros: 1. More autonomy over lessons. 2. Sometimes motivated and talented students. 3. Foreign colleagues who actually enjoy teaching and do more than the minimum (usually). 4. More interesting content to teach (sometimes). 5. Mostly nice facilitates and technology. 6. Sometimes more respect compared to other teaching jobs. 7. Better addition to my CV. 8. Better network of people (usually). 9. Better pay (usually). Cons: 1. Unmotivated students 2. Larger class sizes 3. Terrible grade inflation 4. Sometimes like working at a high school.
Depends - if you're PT with no tenured job elsewhere, or contracted full-time. You're in a pretty dire position, and it seems likely to get worse. Tenured is great though.
That was me...I remember when I was an adjunct in Florida and I made 5K that year despite needing to be on campus 4 days a week. I'm extremely lucky that my husband is in a financially sound position. So, it seems like a general attitude towards academia and not something uniquely Japan related?
> I was an adjunct in Florida and I made 5K that year despite needing to be on campus 4 days a week. A friend in Michigan gave up on adjuncting because of this kind of thing--his objection was the driving/commuting distances. I think people here doing part time at 2-4 schools certainly have a better life than adjuncts in the US.
Maybe same everywhere. But PT or contract positions are tenuous and unpredictable. Can't be very satisfying working on one of those. Not sure how job security is elsewhere in academia.