Job Discussion Forums

[mark_in_saigon]

Sorry for the sarcasm. I think we have to understand that there is a code of behavior for online writing that some (perhaps older) folks may not understand. If you are anonymous, it really is not showing rudeness, it is instead showing the world how witty you are. We older guys may not understand this yet, but it is slowly sinking in. It does not matter how polite you are, how well researched your work is, and how valuable your information may be to others. Look at the forums of the major newspapers in the west, it is hopeless. Here, the worst eventually get knocked off, but at least one keeps coming back in fresh incarnations.

On the topic, I would just chime in that my experience is that if you do a bang up job helping 100 people, maybe 1 is going to really be grateful in a way that you would expect based on your special help. They are supposed to return to their homes and honor their previous teachers at Tet you know. I see almost none of that special thanks given to the foreign teacher. You get a bit during the classes, but once it is over, this generation is ready to go for the next goal, not give thanks for what they have been given. So, my point is, if we do special work for them at low prices, if we give them books or big collections of resources or extra time, the reward for us is either hoping we are helping the nation or just teaching ourselves how to be better teachers and mentors. We have to realize that most VN will alter the truth if it is to their advantage, as you pointed out on the resources your students seem to have. So yeah, if I gave students a break, I would not expect anything in return from them, including being grateful. Instead, I would just compare what language centers charge students for setting this same thing up with you as the foreign teacher. For kids going to the west, $50 an hour for the one kid is not unreasonable. The school keeps about half of it, the teacher gets his half. Of course, the school has to pay off whoever it regularly pays off. If a school is not getting $50 an hour for any class, it is really not enough to pay the bills. Some very low level schools may get by with less. Of course, $50 sounds like a lot to some of these mid range guys, and it is, but if they really start pulling it in regularly, then they too will have to pay these special expenses that will pull it back down.

You will see a lot of folks trying to do this work on the fringes, CL usually has quite a few folks who are advertising their services in the JOBS EDUCATION section, they do not seem to understand that they should be advertising in the SERVICES LESSONS section. Unless you are willing to set up a real business (which I would be very loathe to do over here), it just seems a lot cleaner to me to work for an established school, if you can find a decent one, which is of course pretty rare, but that is another subject.

[vabeckele]

[skarper]

Surely it's relevant to contrast the higher corporate rates with the lower personal rates whatever the OP meant (and it's not IMO 100% clear they meant an individual paying their own way.)

I'd suggest all people involved in this activity not cut prices too low out of a feeling the student can't afford it. They probably can afford to pay much more than we think! The poor here are so poor that English classes are just an impossible dream while the rich are really quite rich even compared to the highish incomes we can generate with modest effort.

[Oh My God]

[TRH]

With my apologies if I misrepresent anyone's comment, here is what I see so far:

ExpatLuke (OP): Asks how much for lessons for 1 or 2-3 students.

demonietto: $15 up to 3 plus $5 for each additional

vabekele: would charge the amount earned with a full class, admittedly overpricing himself.

mark_in-saigon: comment that some can pay $50 but no prices of his own.

ExpatLuke (OP): comment that $15 (demonietto) is the only response.

skarper: minimum $10/hr; minimum $5/student; 4 students=$20

Tigerstyleone: amusing as always. Need I say more?

I’m With Stupid: warns of corporate clients hiring teachers directly to reduce costs as well as more work involved and suggests a rate higher than the rate that teachers are paid by schools.

skarper: confirms comment of I’m With Stupid and suggests 40USD with 25USD minimum. He has already replied to the OP question on smaller classes.

LettersAthruZ: confirms corporate rates in Hanoi ($25-30) and Haiphong ($20-25)

Oh My God: 30-50 USD adults only. Makes reference to business clients.

TRH: My comment that we are talking about the different markets.

Oh My God & Ahn Dep: clever replies

TRH: my comment with detail about my own class: 16 USD/hr for 3 students

mark_in-saigon: reconfirms position that wealthier clients can afford higher fees. Don’t expect gratitude: demand money.

skarper: asserts that OP was unclear although he already replied with both corporate and small class rates.

Oh My God: feels that OP was ambiguous and points out that skarper and AtoZ opened up the subject of business clients (although it was actually I’m With Stupid.)

From the above and lacking further data, I conclude the following: Most truly private lessons in homes seem to run from 15-20USD with a hypothetical low of 10USD (3 comments with pricing details) and rarer instances of higher fees for wealthy clients. Corporate or business based classes (3 comments with pricing details) run from 20-50USD with some teachers holding a firm line at higher pricing.

Please understand that I never intended to criticize those who addressed the matter of business-based classes. I simply wanted to keep the two types sorted out.

[mark_in_saigon]

No prices of my own is correct. I feel that doing this work outside of a "legal" school is not a great idea. You have folks who are scraping by and trying to scoop up a bit more money, whatever they charge is not an indication of what prices should be for a first rate teacher teaching a student from a well to do family. The price I mentioned ($50) is what I KNOW some affluent families will pay to an actual school to get the first rate teacher to do a one on one program. So seems to me, that number more or less shows what these folks will pay. For people trying to get bargain prices, yeah, they can go on CL and pick off some of these guys advertising, they can run an ad of their own, they can go and try to get a westerner from the backpacker's area, lots of things they can do. They can go to the park on PNL and swarm the westerners for free.

I am always amazed by the variation of pricing here, and do not feel that the pricing always reflects the true value of the product itself. Like in the above example, if you can somehow get that same teacher without paying the school, you can cut the price in half. Nice. Some products are even more wild. Food, motorbike repair, used motorbikes. In the boonies, old running Cubs being used for hauling stuff can be had for like $15 or so, below scrap value. A clean one here can be 30 times that. What your product really is like as well as the affluence of your customer makes most of the difference. Location is a factor, and how much time the customer wants to spend looking for the low price, also what kind of external factors he is willing to accept. The same bottle of water that is 25 cents on the street is 5 bucks in a 5 star hotel.

[vabeckele]

I think there are two problems:

1. The Vietnamese, by thinking they can cut out the middleman, can reduce the cost and quite rightly so, but by reducing a corporate class from 150 dollars to paying a non-educated and inexperienced person 20 bucks isn't going to get the same results. I truly believe the Vietnamese are not sophisticated enough to spot a person with substance behind the pitch - It also pays to not notice when the HR girl can save and put (at least some of) the difference in her pocket.

2. The constant divide and debate between qualified and experienced (native) teachers against those without any qualifications and limited experience: Without getting into a debate of which teacher is better, I, at least, want to charge a premium fee due to the fact of having completed 6-7 years of tertiary education; even if I am a dunce I want my investment on that education to 'pay off'. And if I have also worked in the better institutions, that too should count for something. Not forgetting some of us have worked across many countries as well.

Do you guys know that Vietnamese teachers, at least here in Hanoi, are charging 500,000 VND for 2 hour IELTS lessons for classes of 20 students...in their homes! You guys teaching for 10-20 bucks a lesson are literally giving it away - Even a native English speaker without a degree should be able, to at least, conduct speaking and listening skills for these students if not able to go into the academics of reading comprehension and writing.

Show some backbone, wait until you get a class of 10 and then start making money. Those chairs that are used here are, what, 20 dollars each? - If you are happy going over materials with an individual with the most rudimentary of language skills at 20 bucks a go, so be it, but I wouldn't touch that with a barge pole - You could do much better with no real additional effort and provide a better learning experience.

Nothing comes easy I know, but why sell yourself short? Better to have tried and failed while earning, I think, a fee to be higher than what the locals charge and provide (I haven't met many Viets with skills that have wowed me too many times except when it comes to my pay and contract terms), at the very least, an experience in a course provided by a native speaker with all of the collocations and colloquialisms included, naturally. .

[skarper]

MIS is spot on. It's a market so there is wide variation in pricing much of which is not sustainable.

Really, Vietnam is like the wild west of EFL and things have not settled down into a stable market yet (I doubt they ever will). No-one can really say for sure what the value of EFL classes might be in the long run. Is the money spent to put a kid through the ILA or APOLLO 'programme' ever going to be worth it?

Personally, I would not want to work with individuals for less than 30USD an hour - assuming they travel to my home and pay for all classes booked with no refund.

I'm sure people can find cheaper alternatives so I am not in the market.

Corporate work I'd want to be clearing 50USD after tax and expenses - but again I think the market will not bear such a high price long term.


I think if you set about working privately you'd average 10-15 USD an hour private and 20-25USD an hour corporate. You might get a few customers who'd pay more but you'd never fill your schedule without taking on a lot of marginal classes.

Everybody's going to want to study early evening or weekends. Vietnamese go to bed early so any classes after 9pm are never going to work. People also work late so they can't be on time before 7pm. Factor in the naivety of the average Vietnamese and they will not grasp how much you have to make for it to be worth it.

I think there are few people attempting to work privately because it just doesn't work long term.

It does in Japan up to a point and can work well in Korea if you are willing to run the risks.

[TRH]

I have a perhaps annoying habit of trying to look at a problem from another point of view so I tried to look on a few language school websites to see how much general English (not IELTS or similar) courses cost. As far as I can make out for a group setting ILA is $7.75/hr, ACET is $7.20, and VUS is $4.05. I suspect there may be considerable discounting from the higher prices. Still, the points made about Vietnamese trying to cut out the middleman are somewhat valid but students could end up paying more than they would going to one of the higher priced mills. Still, $20/hr for four people is no more or less than a lot of schools.

[ExpatLuke]

For the record, when I originally asked about private lessons, I wasn't talking about corporate ones. But it's interesting to see both sides of the coin.

Private lessons are interesting, and I've found i have large chunks of free time in my day that i could easily fill with additional income. Sounds like $20 per session is a good starting price.

[vabeckele]

[I'm With Stupid]

[skarper]

My experience was that they'd open a class with about 40% of the nominal maximum (though a maximum class size seldom really exists as they will shoehorn in another student no matter how big the class gets). They then hope to fill it up with new enrollments.

I found there were new classes with 5-6 on the list. It varies and ACET always ran full classes of 12-14 (or close to it).

One of the key attractions of finding a private teacher is the low quality and high cost of the language centres. You might get lucky and find a small group of students and a capable and motivated teacher but it has to be a rare conjunction given the business models involved.

The potential customers are looking for a small class of 2-4 people but they're unwilling and unable (often) to pay much more than they'd pay for the language centre formula.

If someone were going to try to make a long term go of teaching privately they'd need about 2 years to build up their client base. Each satisfied customer would refer several more and so on.

Even if you could risk the quagmire of paperwork and so on it'd take 5 years to make it worthwhile.

I wish the government would encourage and facilitate this kind of initiative, but there is no incentive for them to do so and I worry the big players would use their influence to stamp it out if it started to threaten their business.

[ExpatLuke]

[vabeckele]