Language courses from 15RMB/hour at thebeijinger.com classifieds

[tortue]

Hi all,

there are several of such, e.g.:

http://www.thebeijinger.com/classifieds/2009/08/25/20RMBh-for-INTERMEDIATE-class

http://www.thebeijinger.com/classifieds/2009/08/25/15RMB-for-learning-Chinese

http://www.thebeijinger.com/classifieds/2009/08/24/Chinese-lessons-1-on-1-or-small-group-classes-15-30-RMB-per-hour-Convenient-l

Does someone have any experiences with schools like this?

Are these common rates, 15-35 yuan an hour?

Thanks!

[Scoobyqueen]

It is very and too cheap. Do you think a good teacher would be prepared to work for that salary?

[self-taught-mba]

Thank you Scoobyqueen,

Thank you for that. This is why some of the smaller Mandarin schools in Haidian like mine have a hard time. When other schools are offering prices below that which I could hire a qualified teacher, it makes it really hard to compete. And many consumers don't understand the market dynamics.

@original poster: take it from someone who's running a school here for the last 3 1/2 years: For that price I would have to have so many people in the classroom that the learning environment would be horrible before I could even break even. Or I would have to have a severely underqualified person.

Of course some of these places have realized that it looks too cheap and so they just take the same situation and raise the prices! So price is not always an indicator.

One of my competitors (well, not really, but in the same industry) whom I am friends with, was running one of the more decent schools here in Wudaokou. She loved teaching Chinese (teacher herself) and had good no great teachers. It was really disheartening to see her close the place down because the Korean students(mostly, but others as well) kept demanding her teachers with Ph.D./Masters give one-on-one prices at students wages. Many of these professionals were so insulted and disgusted that they have left the market permanently and will go back to researching.

I just can't understand how someone can be willing to spend so much money on the handbags and other expensive crap in Wudaokou and drive the housing prices up in the center of Haidian (housing prices have nearly doubled in three years at Huaqing Jiayuan), just literally throwing money around, while trying to get an unreasonably low rate for education. It just boggles the mind. So call it a long-coming rant I guess:mrgreen:. (NOT directed at the OP of course who is just asking about the value--if only more people did the same . .. ) For the group above it is intentional--for others like the OP, they just don't know (and so not really their fault).

The downward pressure on the prices and consumers treating Chinese lessons like a commodity are beginning to force some of the few decent private schools to give up or to change their business model. It is really sad. The people I think of as my true competitors, who provide quality instruction at a reasonable price are few and far between. I don't like to see them fail, believe it or not, but I understand their growing frustration. If this continues, there are going to be few choices for consumers besides the Universities, cheap but low-quality schools, and very expensive options (middle-men/executive model).

Scoobyqueen, I really appreciate you pointing these things out. In three years I've yet to make a decent living, yet some have accused me of profiteering here in light of some cheaper alternatives - or they expect us to work for free. Not many people here point out what you do. It is deeply appreciated and just might save a few decent places.

[trevelyan]

I actually had a good experience with Diqiucun, Matt. I think more personalized attention at schools like yours provides the best way for beginners to start learning Chinese. But it is necessarily more expensive. Cheaper cram schools serve a useful purpose for people who just want mass exposure and an organized march through materials.

That said, I think we're all on the cusp of a real shake-up with the emergence of hybrid online/offline approaches and the reinvention of what it means to be learning at schools in the first place. This is happening in the private sector - we've been experimenting with it with corporate chinese training - and the people who adopt it don't seem keen on going back. Why go to school when the school can come to you?

What's really interesting about the entire virtual approach is that it introduces scale at the expense of a lot of the soft services that schools provide like motivation and physical peer interaction. People who gravitate to smaller schools may be self-selecting for this stuff. That said, I think the stuff English First is doing is fascinating as a cutting-edge experiment in how to compensate for it - the one near our home at Ginza is basically turning into a social media lab with physical classes on the periphery. You should check it out.