Job Discussion Forums

[eliseinchina]

Genowledge, is a small training center who had a really nice business doing in house corporate training for a very blue chip client list with offices in Shanghai and Beijing. Again, just like KaiEn all the owners are not responding to email and are apparently out of the country (germany) Local staff hasn't been paid in months and foreign staff are owed large sums for their teaching hours. Phones in the Beijing and Shanghai offices are either being answered by a machine or not at all

Apparently (this is probably the only good thing ) they just lost a huge lawsuit in the chinese labor courts, by an FT who recouped a six figure settlement and was crowing about it, until he found out the owners are gone and he'll most likely never see the money.

I'm lucky as a consultant, I saw it coming but still have a few thousand outstanding. People on salary there are really in dire straits, once again having been deserted and just left to fend for themselves.

Why is it that companies don't bother to do the right thing anymore?! Jeeze stand up say we're going down, we're sorry here's some of what we owe you,, We didn't mean for it to happen, sure that's cold comfort but to leave like theives in the night,,, man I just don't get it.

Humbug!

[thefuzz]

This is getting interesting...I wonder which training center / education company will go down next...perhaps it's best to move to the government sector (schools and universities) and stop working for these training centers.

Just out of curiosity: what was the lawsuit about and how much cash was the FT gunning for?

[norwalkesl]

[Laurence]

[zootown]

[mat chen]

Maybe this meltdown is not just in the ESL field. Anyway always where ever you work count how many students you teach and how much they are making because if they are not making money they fly as in this case or in South Korea they fire you with two months left on your contract.

[norwalkesl]

[xiaolongbaolaoxi]

I know this is all over another thread, but... while 3500 is not so hot, it may include housing... if you are in the US right now and looking at another month of rent you can't pay, 3500 plus a place to live looks better. I know I may get a lot of responses, just please PM me.

XLB

[zootown]

[Teatime of Soul]

[LoPresto]

It's ok. Just blame me - Captain America.

3 Cheers for the Frontline.

Yunqi

[sharpe88]

About a half dozen franchises vaporizing in the past few months is a trend, imo

[Neilhrd]

I think there are some trends evident here:

1. In China they love "me too" businesses. In Nanning there has been a proliferation of language schools, mostly Chinese owned and run, which all copy each other and all make the same fundamental mistakes. The result is a price war as they compete for an essentially static number of potential students. Everybody is forced to cut corners, mix ages and abilities in classes, use fake books etc until finally nobody is making a profit. This happens with every kind of business, not just language schools, in this city and the business failure rate is astronomical.

2. Parents are getting harder to fool. The quality of education has not improved at all in the five years I have been in Nanning. In most schools and colleges it has got worse. The schools have responded by spending on flashy offices in prestige locations instead of getting the fundamentals like books, teaching equipment and teacher training right. That fooled the parents for a time but you can't fool all of the people all of the time.

3. In the more advanced cities like Shanghai and Beijing you have a growing pool of parents who have studied abroad or done business abroad and who know what good English is and how it should be taught. These people are not fooled by the Chinglish, corruption and incompetence in China. In Nanning these people are still in their twenties or early thirties and their kids are in primary school. We are seeing pressure for real change at that level in Nanning and the schools are running around like headless chickens. The owners simply don't have the theoretical background in education to respond and several Chinese run scams, without FTs, have gone under. In Beijing and Shanghai I suspect the same is happening higher up the system.

4. The rich may be getting richer and the middle class may be growing in Chinese cities. But their wealth is only on paper. Spiralling real estate prices and frenzied buying in many cities have soaked up liquidity. Many families are paying huge mortgages in relation to their salaries and the disposable income for education isn't what it was a few years ago.

5. A systematic squeeze on private schools by those in the state education system opposed to the teaching of English. These people usually fear losing control of the curriculum if English enables students to access forbidden knowledge of other subjects or, God forbid, to think.

What they do is deliberately burden middle school, high school and vocational college students with so much homework, most of it pointless, that they have no time to attend English classes.

Another wheeze is to deliberately schedule extra classes, sports meetings, political ceremonies etc to clash with English classes and stop students attending.

A third scam, common in Nanning, is for Chinese teachers to barely go through the motions during regular classes then require students to attend additional classes in the evening or at weekends to get the knowledge needed to pass important exams. The teachers charge extra fees for this. They pocket most of it themselves and the principals also get a cut for allowing access to the classrooms.

The net result of all that is that private schools find it all but impossible to recruit viable numbers of students except during the two month summer holiday. It is therefore no surprise to see major schools running into cash flow problems in December.

I suspect this situation will get worse before it gets better so my advice is keep your eyes and ears open and, as many previous posters have said, at the first sign of non payment jump.

[Teatime of Soul]

I think your description of what is going on in Nanning applies to many other cities too.

[zootown]

Also add in the major hurdles some private schools have to go through to get a license to employ foreign teachers and the cost and ongoing cost to keep this license just makes it near impossible.

Gaunxi works very strong in these cases.

The private schools also employ Chinese uni students who are studying to be English teachers to teach at their private schools.

I wonder when this avenue will be shut down.