Seoulscapade

Language Education Institute at SNU

It’s been a couple of months since I resigned from the Language Education Institute at SNU after 6 years on the job. I left with an overwhelming feeling of contempt for the place and how it is run.  My patience just ran out, and the most important thing to do then was to quit.

I’ve had to take a pay cut but that’s fine with me. I’m free lancing now and a hell of a lot happier. Admittedly, it was worry before some work came along but I’ve got some now that should last a while. Now I can work from home—an ideal situation that fits in well with my astronomy studies, independent temperament and inability to suffer any more clueless twits.

I won’t go into it to save myself some lawsuits, but I will describe a practice which it also done in Korea’s private companies. It’s truely ludicrous. This place had a system of temporary upper management. The Director’s term is 2 years or less and the Executive Director signs on for 2 years with a maximum 2 year extension. The institute was essentially a business run inside the university. However, it gets worse, only Humanties academics are given the top positions, not business people nor necessarily people with any experience.

The academic careerists are chosen according to the “network” and not by application. So, we had Humanities people who were clueless about business and about what we did, but they were in the position of running the business of the institute and our department! We used to joke that we should write a manual for these blow-ins so we didn’t have upheaval every 2 years or less. We’d have to adjust to the whims of whomever happened to .

So I ask the question, If you needed a manager for your business and you had the choice of employing for the long term businessperson with experience or a Humanities academic on a temporary basis whose main concern is their career, who would you choose? Or, let me put it another way. Which one of the two is the last person you would want running a business of any kind? . . . A reply isn’t necessay. I rest my case.