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Miyazaki
Joined: 12 Jul 2005
Posts: 635
Location: My Father's Yacht
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 Posted: Mon Jan 22, 2007 8:03 am Post subject: |
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| G Cthulhu wrote: |
| Berlitz is not a Japanese company |
Yes, it is.
It's owned by Benesse, a Japanese company. |
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Alberta605
Joined: 23 Dec 2006
Posts: 94
Location: Japan
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| Posted: Fri Jan 26, 2007 5:10 am Post subject: |
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G Cthulhu when you wrote 'Berlitz is not a Japanese company, doesn't have the international infrastructure necessary to supply 3000+ teachers from the required countries every year...' consider their response...
'With 128 years of experience, more than 450 centers in over 60 countries...' So says the Berlitz website.
Why they can't provide an exact figure is beyond me. For their information I believe 61 comes after 60, and so on.
It was the Regional Manager, a guy by the name of Sterling, who told me that Berlitz are manovering for a monopoly on the provision of ALTs to Japanese state schools. So, G Cthulhu despite your reservations they do believe they can do it based on their international size, years of experience and good reputation. The reason they won't be given that is because it would be a very elementary mistake indeed to give any one supplier a complete contractual monopoly.
I didn't know that Berlitz was a Japanese owned company either. Btw, can anyone confirm that this curious situation also applies to McDonalds in Japan? |
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G Cthulhu
Joined: 07 Feb 2003
Posts: 1373
Location: Way, way off course.
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| Posted: Fri Jan 26, 2007 2:58 pm Post subject: |
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Yup, it is a Japanese company these days. My mistake entirely - I wasn't aware it was bought out all the way back in 2001.
| Alberta605 wrote: |
G Cthulhu when you wrote 'Berlitz is not a Japanese company, doesn't have the international infrastructure necessary to supply 3000+ teachers from the required countries every year...' consider their response...
'With 128 years of experience, more than 450 centers in over 60 countries...' So says the Berlitz website.
Why they can't provide an exact figure is beyond me. For their information I believe 61 comes after 60, and so on.
It was the Regional Manager, a guy by the name of Sterling, who told me that Berlitz are manovering for a monopoly on the provision of ALTs to Japanese state schools. So, G Cthulhu despite your reservations they do believe they can do it based on their international size, years of experience and good reputation. |
While I was entirely mistaken about the ownership part (whch I guess removes the obvious obstacle that I was thinking of) I still tend to think the rest of the problesm they would have would be too much for them. I can understand they might think they can manage it, but I suspect they don't really understand the size and complexity of the undertaking. If they just expect to supply 6000 warm bodies from wherever they can find them then I would suggest they haven't understood what the contracting organisations seem to expect & want. IIRC, they already do supply some dispatch ALTs in some places in Tokyo, but it's a big step up to taking over the provision of ALTs for all the positions currently covered by CLAIR through JET which is what we're talking about. That's something around 6000 people, with a turnover of around 3000 a year.
Yes, they have offices in a lot of places arond the world, but AFAIK they have no real experience in supplying 3000+ staff a year to all over Japan. Their offices, remember, are trading (opps, sorry "teaching") offices, not recruiting offices. The move to coordinating both the Japanese end of several thousand contracting organisations and the recruiting end (without a massive change in the makeup of ALTs provided) is, I think, something that is beyond them at this point. At the Japanese end, AFAIK, Berlitz simply doesn't have the infrastructure in place to cope with supporting 6000 staff spread all over Japan.
I'll admit, my objection is predicated on the idea of them supplying people of the same capability or higher than the current CLAIR programme. They may well turn around and try the Interac/NOVA approach of simply taking any warm body with the paper qualifications, in which case, sure, they might probably manage it. And Japanese education would suffer all the more for the approach. CLAIR may not be much good, but it is getting better and, I believe, headed in the right direction, and IMO the private sector has never shown itself to provide a better solution or result in the area of public mass education.
Add in the problem of the Japanese government departments and CLAIR not wanting to give up their control and I can't see it happening any time soon. Personally, I don't think Berlitz has much of a chance against three of the more powerful Japanese Ministry's and the 2200+ local government bodies that go to make up CLAIR when it comes to swaying the Japanese government a whole - not all in one go, at least. It would take some _serious_ bribery to get that one to fly IMO.
YMMV. A lot. :) |
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Alberta605
Joined: 23 Dec 2006
Posts: 94
Location: Japan
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| Posted: Sat Jan 27, 2007 11:09 am Post subject: |
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| The fact that Berlitz is a Japanese owned company certainly explains some of its weird policies. I'm still trying to work out what they were talking about when they tried to explain their travel reimbursement system. I actually felt as if I'd spent 3 hours on a train by the end of that diatribe. |
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