Getting A Ba While In Thailand

[RobinJames]

Hi, so I was looking on eslcafe.com and this http://www.tefllife.com/degree caught my eye.

It says you can work for 30,000 baht a month for 9 months of the year and study. You sign up for 3 years. I e-mailed them about it and they said they've had problems this year with this course so it has been postponed until 2012.

Anyway my question is this..

Is there anything else that I can do like this within Thailand itself or in any other Asian countries ?

Sounds like something I'd like to do but how do I go about finding a course like this ?

thank you

[Scott]

There are a number of sponsors of this forum with banners in this sub-forum. You might want to check with them out. I believe a number of them offer assistance with finding employment.

If you have a Bachelor's and a TEFL, you will pretty well set to go.

Best of luck.

[richard10365]

There is so much that seems wrong with this offer. It looks like a diploma mill mixed in with slave labor.

Universities in Thailand have to be certified by the Ministry of Education. Degrees are only recognized internationally if an organization such as the the Ministry of Education in Thailand certifies the university. Although in the fine print on the webpage, it does say it will probably not be recognized in the west.

The university needs to exist. Try finding the Institute of Technology Ayuthaya on the internet. A real university would have a website in Thailand that looked something like this:

http://ic.payap.ac.th/

I am not sure but I do believe working (teaching) in a school outside of the university is illegal without a work permit. You can work for the university but not someone else.

I am not sure how they are getting around the issuance of a student visa.

Finally, check out this story about TEFL International.

http://teflblacklist.blogspot.com/2007/11/tefl-international.html

This program seems very shady. I would avoid it.

[Scott]

I checked out the website and the school offers an education visa. I would assume that means they are recognized by the Thai government.

At any rate, the OP is asking about other options since this one won't be immediately available.

[richard10365]

I checked out the website and the school offers an education visa. I would assume that means they are recognized by the Thai government.

At any rate, the OP is asking about other options since this one won't be immediately available.

Language schools give education visas without giving a degree. I don't think a visa means their diplomas are legit.

[paully]

^ Have to agree with richard. Can you really work legally on an Education Visa in Thailand? You can on its equivalent in the UK (up to 20 hours a week) but is the same true in TL? I'd want a written guarantee of this before I signed up. The link virtually admits that this is a grey area: "As a student you cannot earn a traditional salary." Our understanding, of course, is that you need a work permit to legally perform any form of work in Thailand, paid or unpaid, full-time or part-time, 'traditional salary' or non-traditional salary.

Caveat emptor here, I'm afraid.

[Scott]

Anyone pursuing any type of educational degree or work in Thailand needs to check out the law. I would neither agree or disagree with what they say.

Some years back our school took placements from an educational facility. It was legal. The teaching was a part of their educational program. They were paid a salary, as well.

Once their training was over, it was up to the school whether we wanted to keep them. If we did, we applied for a work permit.

There are very few laws which are clear in Thailand.

[richard10365]

Anyone pursuing any type of educational degree or work in Thailand needs to check out the law. I would neither agree or disagree with what they say.

Some years back our school took placements from an educational facility. It was legal. The teaching was a part of their educational program. They were paid a salary, as well.

Once their training was over, it was up to the school whether we wanted to keep them. If we did, we applied for a work permit.

There are very few laws which are clear in Thailand.

If you are going to work hard to get a degree it would make sense to do something that is valid all over the world and not just in Thailand. Even the advertisement for the degree says it is not valid in the west. According to their website...

"Is the degree internationally recognized? The answer is a qualified “Yes”. Will it be accepted in China, Thailand, and most countries where they require a degree to teach and while ITA is an accredited Thai university it may not be recognized in Western countries as the equivalent to a local degree."

I emailed Harvard, Cambridge, and UCLA and asked them if a degree from Payap University in Chiang Mai would be recognized to continue studying in their schools and they all said yes. They all said as long as the university that you get the degree in is certified by the ministry of education in the country where that university is located, then Harvard, Cambridge and UCLA, as well as every other university in the world, would recognize that degree as a valid degree. Feel free to email them and ask the same question.

Also, I'm not an English expert by any stretch of the imagination but if I was going to try to sell a school on teaching English I would check for errors in the information I post. Check out that last sentence in the quote from that school that I posted.

Edited February 4, 2011 by richard10365