Can I support myself teaching English in Loja?

It feels like I get asked once a week by yet another person whether it is possible for a foreigner to support himself/herself in Loja by teaching English. The shortest answer is “no.” The next shortest answer is “probably not.”

Here's what I know. There are two main ways to go, working at a language school or working at a university. Less common ways will be discussed after these two primary paths.

As I understand it, the requirements to teach English at a university are currently in flux, becoming less strict, and will allow individual universities more flexibility in hiring. However, some may stick as close to the former guidelines as they can for other reasons (school accreditation and ranking, marketing, status, etc.). The guidelines that have been in place in recent years are the following. To teach English at a university in Loja the person needed 1) a Master's degree, 2) a TESOL/TEFL/CELTA/etc. certificate [any of these worked] and 3) bilingual skills Spanish/English (this is because there is very little English spoken in Loja and lots of bureaucracy you have to navigate on campus, all of which is in Spanish... at a prominent university here even the English Department meetings are held in Spanish since many of the professors don't actually speak/understand that much English). Requirements 1 and 2 above were said to be dictated by national government regulations.

Assuming you meet all those requirements and get hired, the starting pay for foreign teachers at a prominent university here is $600/month. In my experience, foreign teachers are expected to work harder and longer hours, so you would likely be working 50-60 hours/week (or more) for that monthly salary. Some of my foreign co-workers got a raise after the first two years of service.

The large public university in Loja does pay better than the other universities here. My impression is that it is not easy to get hired by them, but if you could, you would make enough to live on if you lived frugally. It is very unlikely that they will hire anyone without a Masters degree, and you will have to be bilingual just to get through the first interview.

There is a smaller private university in Loja that pays $15/hour for people with a Master's and $10/hour for people with a Bachelor's, but that is ONLY for the scheduled time in the classroom. You have many other duties besides that paid time, such as preparing to teach your classes, creating exams, grading papers, meeting with students outside of class, department meetings, and filling out all the paperwork required by the school. If you could manage to spend only two hours doing these other things for every one hour spent actually teaching the class, then the Master's degree people would be getting $5/hour while the Bachelor's degree people would be earning $3.33/hour.

The other principal way to go is working at a language school. I can tell you that the pay is even worse, though the requirements are much easier to meet. Many schools will hire people who only have the TESOL/TEFL/CELTA/etc., certificate. However, most schools also pay ONLY for the actual time teaching the class in the classroom. Using the two hours outside of class for each hour inside class ratio, the $6/hour they promise works out to actually be $2/hour for your time spent. In addition, many schools will not provide you with teaching supplies and then fault you for not having them in your classroom. So that $2/hour you are making is going to cover the cost of the supplies you need to buy and your transportation to get to the school and back. It is therefore an excellent option for those who don't need to earn any money and are looking for volunteer work.

I worked at a language school in Cuenca the first year that I lived in Ecuador. I kept track of my hours and my pay. Sadly, I discovered that I was working 40 hours/week and earning $80/week after taxes. So that $2/hour was quite accurate in a very real sense.

Now, there are foreigners who live off these wages (especially at the university). In my experience they are young people who do not mind living out of a backpack. They rent a room in an Ecuadorian home, they do not eat out, they do not take taxis, and when they need to go somewhere they walk or take the bus. Many also seem to have parents who buy them plane tickets so that they can return to their home country periodically. I have seen some very happy 25-year-olds living this way. However it does not seem to be workable for most of us older folk.

Many ask how Ecuadorians manage to survive on such low wages. In my experience, they do this by living in large family groups and pooling their wages. It is a system that seems to work quite well for them. In my neighborhood, there are about 15 people per household (three and sometimes four generations under one roof). Each household has one or two cars and all the adults in the home take turns driving the cars. They seem to share everything else as well – food, clothing, computers, etc. It is much cheaper for 15 people to share all these things than to have 5 separate households of 3 people each trying to meet all their own needs.

There are also regular K-12 schools that are always looking for native English teachers. I interviewed at one but the pay was $4/hour with many required unpaid hours. I suspect that job was actually a net loss of income. I had a friend who was a midwife in New Hampshire. Her favorite joke was about the midwife who won the lottery and when asked what she would do with the million dollars, she said “I'm going to keep doing midwifery until the money is all gone”. It would seem that teaching English at a K-12 school in Loja would be something like that.

One other possibility is to build up a private client base of people who will pay a decent wage. There are lots of wealthy Ecuadorians and if they want to learn English badly enough, they will pay an excellent English teacher $10/hour (which works out to more like $7/hour because you don't get paid to prepare the lessons, but there's no grading papers, etc., that you would have to do at a school or university).

Internet speed and reliability has improved in Loja over the last decade, so it may be possible to teach online to earn money. However online English teaching is becoming more difficult to find as companies and governments change policies and are also using more Artificial Intelligence to avoid having to pay workers.

One more consideration is that people are able to earn enough to survive by teaching English in Guayaquil and Quito. I've heard that universities and some private K-12 schools are paying $2000/month in those cities. There may be better paying options in Cuenca as well, but you'd have to ask around.

Good luck and may you always have a roof overhead and food in your cupboard.


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