Mexico?

Mexican universities work just the way everything else in Mexico works -- personal contacts.

I worked for a year at la Universidad Autonoma de Guadalajara in the School of Linguistics. I taught various Second Language Methodology courses (mostly in English). The way I got the job is that the summer before I was traveling with my (Mexican) wife and just walked and asked to see the director of the school of linguistics. We spoke for a while (in Spanish) and then later I sent him a letter expressing my interest in working there.

I was looking for a break from university EFL jobs in the Middle East and I took this job which paid a tiny fraction of my Gulf salary. Don't expect to earn any more than survival pay at a Mexican university. Many of the Mexican profs have some kind of second job -- in fact everyone in Mexico seems to have at least two jobs. Luckily housing, clothing, and food are cheap. Almost everything else isn't. Also don't expect much in the way of resources at a Mexican university. Students at the Autonoma didn't buy books period. The only way they were going to have a foreign textbook was if they could somehow get their hands on a copy and take it over to the local copy house. Don't be shocked. That's just the way the system worked.

Eventually it became clear that I just couldn't afford to live on the salary I was earning (I have three children) and so I gave up the job at the Autonoma to take an EFL job at ITESM Campus Guadalajara across town. Again I just showed up with a CV and talked to the director. ITESM is a very well respected chain of Mexican universities (Yale and Harvard both send recruiters there each year) and the students generally come from Mexico's elite (lots and lots of honest to God blonde Mexicans with European family names). I earned about 3 times my salary at the Autonoma but was still only breaking even each "quincena."

And it's hard, hard work living and working in Mexico within the Mexican economy. You can forget all that siesta nonsense -- I've never seen harder working, more industrious people. At both of these universities professors were required to punch a time clock. You got a couple of weeks off a Semana Santa and a couple more in summer. And a week at Christmas. But that was it.

Eventually I decided to head back "overseas" to greener pastures after talking with a fellow American who had worked out a nice little life for himself and his wife. He'd work in Saudi for one or two years, then "retire" to Mexico for three years without working -- then head off to Saudi again.

Shortly later I got a tenured position at a Japanese university. Now I have the time and money to travel in Mexico that I never had while I was living there.

Chronicle Forums