Articles
Rob giving a presentation at an International Symposium at the Communications University of Zhejiang, Hangzhou China.
Teaching in China
Alumnus Rob Burton shares his experiences of how his PhD in Sociology from Exeter has helped his career in China.
The University of Exeter conferred my PhD in Sociology in 2002 when I was 48. My supervisors were John Vincent who was head of the department and Paul Keating. My main focus of my thesis was Cornish identity and the work of what I called cultural entrepreneurs in Cornwall who were building this “recreated” identity. I had been lucky enough to secure a research job, straight after graduating from Plymouth with a sociology degree, in the Centre for European Legal Studies at Exeter which allowed me as a full-time member of staff to register for the PhD. I also started doing part time tutoring and teaching in the sociology departments at Exeter, Plymouth University and took a post with the Open University teaching Social Science.
When that research job contract came to a conclusion I continued as a researcher in the Department of Continuing and Adult Education. I worked there for two years whilst continuing teaching before securing a post at the Institute for Employment Studies at Sussex University where I was the lead researcher on a project called “Making the Right Choice”. For this project we surveyed over 20,000 prospective students about how they were going to choose their new university now that they had to pay for tuition. This was in 1999 meaning I had to fit all of the qualitative PhD research I was doing in Cornwall around this full-time job as well.
After that job came to its conclusion the University of Plymouth, where I had achieved my BSc Sociology degree employed me as probably the first dedicated Market Research Manager in a British university, based on my previous research experience. I stayed there for 12 years until I took voluntary redundancy.
Then the real adventure starts because I moved to China to teach English. I flew into Beijing, enroute to Nanjing in August 2011. I was to teach at the Nanjing College of Information Technology. The college ran a Canadian syllabus aiming at getting the Chinese students into the mother Canadian institution once they graduated. This wasn’t the best experience for a newbie, the students were not motivated to learn, the college didn’t seem to care, so I packed my bags and left to return to the UK after about five months.
Back in the UK I managed to find some work as a temporary Market Research Manager for Kingston University and also did some consulting for Queen Mary, University of London. But I really wanted to get back to China. China has a pretty strict age limit for foreign teachers and I needed to get a new work visa before I was 60. In August 2013 aged 59 I scraped in under the limit and returned to Nanjing to work in the Foreign Language Department of a top three High School. Despite the age regulations I stayed there six years believing that my PhD was the ace-in-the-hole that allowed the PSB (Public Security Bureau – the police) to renew my work visa and residents visa year-on-year.
I was happily teaching year 11 and 12 students IELTS English when the agency who employed me dropped the bombshell that I was illegal and had been since I had hit 60. There is this thing in China called “Guanxi”. It means “personal relationships” but it also is part of doing nefarious business like getting a work visa via the back door - who knows if money changed hands - I don’t. It turned out that the agency had been caught employing people on tourist visas and now the PSB and the local provincial government was going to audit them. So I was sacked, by WeChat, while on holiday during the spring break in Thailand.
When we got back to Nanjing, we were told to be out of our apartment within four weeks and I had to find a job, quite difficult when you are six years over the age limit for a legal visa. But the PhD came into play again. I posted my CV on the various jobs in China websites and was contacted by a university in Hangzhou, Zhejiang Province. I might also add here, that the previous August I had married my long-term Chinese girlfriend so there were now two of us to support. Nevertheless, the Communications University of Zhejiang told me that they could get me a legal visa because they could make the case that I was the “expert” they needed to teach English.
During my time in China I had not been slack. I had written and self-published two IELTS textbooks for students, one on writing and the other on speaking. I had also published three novels and various short stories, which were listed on my CV. This along with my PhD, my previous teaching experience, and so on allowed the PSB to give me the visas.
Fast forward to April 2022, after 3 years happily teaching at CUZ another bombshell. Once again I was too old and despite giving me the visas these past three years they couldn’t do it anymore. Panic stations. My residents visa expired the 27 June. (As I write it's the 22 June). I needed to find another job. Although I am married and I could get a spouse visa, but that doesn’t allow one to work and even thought I am 68 I still have work left in me. Consequently, I sent out many emails and messages and was quickly interviewed by the Science and Technology University of China, a top 10 university located in Hefei, Anhui Province. They offered me a job, so I was over the moon as you can imagine. Then, one week later an email turned up, “sorry, you are too old, we can only employ up to age 65”.
But then another university was on the scene. Wenzhou Kean University a joint venture with Kean University in the US. The application process is long and arduous, but they are interested in me because of my PhD in Sociology from Exeter. The dean of the university wants to strengthen their social science offering and wants me to teach sociology as well as English. I’m guessing that there are not many native speakers in China who have a PhD in sociology. So, I have come a full circle from teaching sociology at Exeter and Plymouth at the beginning of my career to teaching it at the end of my career. I am jumping the gun here. I don’t yet have a signed contract. I have been “nominated” by said university to their mother university in the US, but they have verbally told me I will get a contract in August. I just have to sort out the visa issues until then.
Interestingly, now my sociology is back in focus I am currently working with a team at Zhejiang Gongshang University proofreading the translation of an anthology of 40 eminent Chinese sociologists as part of the Social Science Foundation Project “Rebuilding Chinese Sociology” which is really interesting.
I must also say I wouldn’t have got this far without the help and support (and reference letters) from my long-term friend and Exeter PhD alumni, Associate Professor Greg Martin of Sydney University - we were PhD students together. Also, thanks to the Registry at Exeter who very professionally and quickly helped to confirm my degree with WES in the United States. And if they read this thanks to my friends and PhD supervisors in the Sociology Department Dr John Vincent and Dr Paul Keating for setting me on the road to this exciting and fulfilling academic life.
Date: 21 July 2022