Ming Chuan University After One Year
A year or so ago, I wrote a piece that I posted on Dave's ESL Information Journal
http://www.eslcafe.com/jobinfo/asia/sefer.cgi?display:1032998743-7279.txt
in which I stated that Ming Chuan University is an excellent employer. I stated this in response to postings stating that Taiwan universities are bogged down in politics and corruption. Now that I have been at Ming Chuan for a year, do I still feel the same way about the school? Unreservedly -- yes!
This is not to say that I think MCU is a bed of roses. It most certainly is not. I have all kinds of problems and disputes with the administration of the school. Of course I do. The school has very particular ways of running things that go back decades. I have my own ideas about education. My ideas and theirs don't always mix well. But that's just life, and it is bound to happen anywhere.
The reason that I unreservedly continue to recommend MCU is that it continues to be a fair place to work. Regardless of our differences in philosophy, the school and its administration are genuinely committed to making it a better university. As a result, I have yet to see or even hear about corruption at the school. It may be there, in fact, I suspect it must be there, but it's so out of the sight of ordinary instructors that we don't even know it exists. And sure there's lots of politics at the school. While it's not that bad in our department, the Department of Applied English (DAE) does have a lot of internal wrangling going on. It just doesn't touch us.
In fact, my experience at MCU differences so much from the other reports about teaching at universities in Taiwan that I devised a theory of a sort to explain this. Most foreign teachers work at small, private universities, many of which are located in rural Taiwan. The bad stories you hear are coming from these kinds of schools. It is there that you get congregations of second-rate local instructors.Combining this with other negative factors creates the corruption and chaos that you read about elsewhere. Little of this exists at the major, urban-based universities where the top professors teach.
Ming Chuan University remains a good place to work. It has its problems, but they are no worse or intolerable than the problems that you can reasonably expect to find anywhere else. I recommend it strongly as a place to work for anyone looking for a job in Taiwan.
8:16:56 PM 
Ming Chuan University After One Year
A year or so ago, I wrote a piece that I posted on Dave's ESL Information Journal
http://www.eslcafe.com/jobinfo/asia/sefer.cgi?display:1032998743-7279.txt
in which I stated that Ming Chuan University is an excellent employer. I stated this in response to postings stating that Taiwan universities are bogged down in politics and corruption. Now that I have been at Ming Chuan for a year, do I still feel the same way about the school? Unreservedly -- yes!
This is not to say that I think MCU is a bed of roses. It most certainly is not. I have all kinds of problems and disputes with the administration of the school. Of course I do. The school has very particular ways of running things that go back decades. I have my own ideas about education. My ideas and theirs don't always mix well. But that's just life, and it is bound to happen anywhere.
The reason that I unreservedly continue to recommend MCU is that it continues to be a fair place to work. Regardless of our differences in philosophy, the school and its administration are genuinely committed to making it a better university. As a result, I have yet to see or even hear about corruption at the school. It may be there, in fact, I suspect it must be there, but it's so out of the sight of ordinary instructors that we don't even know it exists. And sure there's lots of politics at the school. While it's not that bad in our department, the Department of Applied English (DAE) does have a lot of internal wrangling going on. It just doesn't touch us.
In fact, my experience at MCU differences so much from the other reports about teaching at universities in Taiwan that I devised a theory of a sort to explain this. Most foreign teachers work at small, private universities, many of which are located in rural Taiwan. The bad stories you hear are coming from these kinds of schools. It is there that you get congregations of second-rate local instructors.Combining this with other negative factors creates the corruption and chaos that you read about elsewhere. Little of this exists at the major, urban-based universities where the top professors teach.
Ming Chuan University remains a good place to work. It has its problems, but they are no worse or intolerable than the problems that you can reasonably expect to find anywhere else. I recommend it strongly as a place to work for anyone looking for a job in Taiwan.
8:16:56 PM [Macro error: Can't evaluate the expression because the name "commentLink" hasn't been defined.]
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