I am curious what the value of an MA in TESOL is in Korea at this time, and what my options are now that I have one.
For full context:
- I'm from the United States.
- I have a BA in English.
- I have many years of experience working in Korea as a native English-speaking teacher, mostly elementary grades in schools and hagwons, and a little bit of middle school grades. Some of it was in GEPIK.
- I worked for a summer at GIFLE (Gyeonggi Institute of Foreign Language Education), teaching some teacher-training modules for Gyeonggi English teachers.
- I am living in Seoul now and teach at a branch of a good hagwon.
- Since the beginning of August, I now have a Masters in TESOL. It's an online program from a reputable U.S. university, which I completed while living here in Korea.
- I like my hagwon job a lot. But I have hit the ceiling for raises in salary, academic credentials don't matter, and in order to work as anything other than an NT in the company I would need an F-visa.
- I've always had E-2 visas, never an F-visa.
- My Korean language skills are not all that great, for someone who has lived in the country as long as I have. I didn't study it very hard. But my pronunciation is good, I'm culturally sensitive and get along well, and I'm able to improve and would be willing to invest time in getting a lot better.
As far as I know, university positions require an MA, and I would be interested in exploring those kinds of options, not least because there is typically more vacation time than hagwons allow.
I imagine that competition for such positions would be fierce, more so in Seoul than elsewhere.
But I have heard that there are positions in certain companies for R&D, curriculum design, etc. This would also be attractive to me.
I'm willing to stay in Korea to make the most of my experience in having taught here for so long. But I'm also willing to work in another country, particularly if my MA in TESOL gives access to jobs with better pay and/or benefits than what is offered in Korea.
Does anyone have any insight into how much broader my employment options are, now that I have this additional credential?
Any opinions and advice appreciated!
