The market for English teachers was always a bubble

The comments were shared following a VnExpress article about foreign teachers in Vietnam lamenting salaries drop and increased competition, with some receiving VND350,000 (US$13.80) an hour.

"It must be a very dodgy company to be only paying VND350K/hour. I think I started on around VND400K/hour and left making VND540K/hour."
somesaigonguy

"When first year teachers in Australia get $75 an hour, who are these ... in Vietnam working for peanut money $12 an hour."
clown.bozo

"The market was always a bubble. There was a time when they would pay exorbitant amounts to backpackers and tourists to be able to market the center as having "foreign teachers". It was the main gimmick for the volatile language teaching market for a while. And then the government began tightening regulations, first requiring expats to have a TESOL teaching certificate, then asking them to have degrees related to teaching, followed by the active promotion of high-quality local personnel who can do the job twice as well while demanding half the payment. As TESOL as a field of education grow in local universities, the demands for expats decline. It's really funny because arguably the market for TEFL is larger than ever, yet the quality of English centers is getting so bad the overall level of proficiency jumped off a cliff compared to what it was like in the past when there were fewer frauds around."
dnlong.96

"Most centers still try to get away with not doing their jobs properly, low pay, not checking qualifications, not knowing about the new Vietnam laws about work permits, not helping foreign teachers with the legal paperwork."
pieterman12345

"It was always an exploitative market."
kclak89