Maximum number of years at a uni

 A reader question from Paul:

"I am concerned about being told that Korean universities have a mandatory firing policy after 4 or 5 years.  I plan to be here for the long term so wonder if it is even worth my while to consider working at a university if this policy is indeed in place."

I periodically cruise the Korean job ads on ESL Cafe and many unis do indeed have this kind of policy.   As far as I know, there is no official government policy concerning this.  However, there is a pension thing going on.  In your 5th year, as a member of the Korean teacher's pension plan (of which many unis belong to), your school has to pay a substantially bigger amount of money (like 50% of your contribution as opposed to 5% in years 1-4).  Now, I can't claim to be an expert on this whole thing and this is really only my guess as to why schools have this policy.  Hopefully some of the readers can enlighten us further. 

What I do know is that some of my coworkers have been at my school for 10 years or more.  And a few other schools that I know around my area don't have any sort of policy either and people have been there for decades. 

So ask before the interview and find out if your school has this policy and don't waste your time on schools that do.