Korean Job Discussion Forums

[winterfall]

I've been curious about this for a while now. On average, what is the price difference per child at an English hagwon without a Native Speaker vs a hagwon with one?

Up in satellite cities like Dongducheon, a Foreign teacher hagwon will charge something like 80,000 per child for twice a week. In Jeju I heard, it's about 60,000 per child for 3x a week.

How about in Seoul?

I know prices depend a lot on location, like Dongdaemun vs Gangnam but there must be some kinda average.


Cause when you think about it, we get paid a lot more than the average Korean English major. It's not worth it to hire recruiters, fly us in and give us apartments unless your making a decent margin

[eamo]

It's a pretty useless discussion unless you talk about it in hours. How many hours per month.

Native speaker kindergartens in Gangnam charge around 1.5mill per kid per month for 9am to 2pm each day.

A typical ECC or Wonderland-style hagwon anywhere in Korea might be less than 200,000 per month for about 12 hours per month.

[jvalmer]

Based on my informal survey, I'd say about 75% of families don't send their kids to English hagwons every single semester. Although I'd say at least 75% of students do attend some kind of hagwon (not necessarily english) at some point, for some time at least once, before they graduate high school.

So I'd say most families that do send their kids to english hagwons continuously for a number of years can afford it.

[T-J]

What eamo said.

Average hagwon fee in Seoul is about 10,000 per hour.

If a foreign teacher costs 4 million a month, including salary, tax, pension, insurance and including prorated airfare and housing. The teacher needs to teach 400 student hours a month, or 100 a week, for the hagwon to break even.

Depending on the circumstances of the hagwon, different rates of return will be acceptable. Some hagwons will be looking to at least double the investment, while others may be in a position to add on an additional teacher while operating at a net loss with the intention of expansion. But the 100 student hours per week is the break even point I think you are asking about.

[bobbybigfoot]

^^^My school pulls in more than 300 student teaching hours from me per week. From your post, one would assume they are doing rather well. But there's a lot more to the story:

* size of the building (maintenance, heat, insurance)
* fleet of buses owned
* support staff
* advertising

My school, at one time, had 6 full time Native teachers. We now have half that. Sure they are using us efficiently, but they aren't using their building, support staff and buses efficiently.

[eamo]

My first hagwon was a large-ish, 15 classroom, kindy and elementary ECC.........it did very well as it was the only native-speaker hagwon in the area....

Anyway, the native speakers, with the help of an informative Korean co-worker, worked out once that the owner had to be pulling in over 50,000,000 per month, at the very very least. All estimated figures were extremely conservative.

Yet this boss wouldn't set the aircon's to anything less than 26C all summer!!

[morrisonhotel]

Are those kind of fees fairly uniform or am I right in assuming that English hagwons are charging a lot more than other hagwons? I realise that other foreign language teachers are typically earning less, but are the hagwons charging less?

[winterfall]

Yea of course maintenance, utilities, etc add up. Different hagwons have different expected returns, etc etc etc. Your missing the point. I'm not talking about the hagwon business, profit making devices, or how many overhead expenses gears are in the engine

I'm asking, from the perspective of an average middle class Korean family. How much do they have to pay to get x hrs per month with a Native Speaker. I understand price varies widely by location but for the purpose of this discussion let's throw out the outliers: Gangnam, Apkujeong, Myeong-dong. All those ritzy places that charge triple just because spending power = status.

Eeamo says about 200 per kid for 12 hours a month (Elementary School), that's about 3 classes a week (Depending on how long the classes are). Of course this doesn't include multi-enrollment discount packages. But at the basic rate, 1 kid, is this about right? Can anyone confirm this?

Question 2: What's the price for middle school, and high school students for x hours per month with a native speaker?

Question 3: What's the price difference between a Korean English teacher a Foreign teacher. (From the family's perspective, not the hagwon)

Example: To refer back to Eeamo's info, an FT taught class costs 200,000 for 12 hours a month for 1 elementary kid.

Is it safe to assume that a Korean English teacher led class would cost 100,000? Half as much? (On average)

[winterfall]

Let me explain, why I want to know. I'm deskwarming and I'm bored. I used to think that going to hagwon was something exclusively reserved for the middle class and up. What I found out is, everyone finds a way to afford hagwon including the lower classes and people on welfare.

Korea being the competitive society it is and in a perfect world hagwon hours = life prospectives, irrelevant of individual learning differences. If we assume that everyone is the same.

Then by knowing the average hagwon prices for a native speaker vs a Korean English teacher. Then we can estimate the average expendable salary a family needs in order to have their kid or kids continually enrolled in an English hagwon.

As the old timers or people who've been in korea for awhile know, families will sometimes have their kids specialize in certain areas to get a competitive advantage, while neglecting the rest of their skills sets. It's a high risk gamble that usually pays off. In order of popularity, usually math and english are the most intensely invested in subjects. At my tech school, the better than average families do this and their kids always go to higher level universities than the rest. Of course coming out of a tech school helps but it's interesting to see families exploit niche areas

[sojusucks]

They work out deals, too. There can be students sitting side-by-side in a class who pay different rates.

[akcrono]

[Lost500]

Interesting topic.

My school is 375,000 per student - for that they get 15 hours a week.

I have 70 students, seems I am a goldmine!

I get 2.5 + 400 for apt & I do not want to face the math.

Ding dang it ha ha

[ontheway]

[winterfall]

[Juregen]