Let's Japan.org Debunking Eikaiwa and Ramblings in Japan

This is going to leave a mark:

China's Education Ministry on Sunday warned students considering studying overseas against Australian schools run by the GEOS group after more than 40 Chinese students were left stranded with the group's collapse.

More than 2,300 students in GEOS group schools across Australia were affected after the college closures. The schools were scattered across Sydney, Melbourne, Brisbane, Perth and Cairns.

GEOS is a Japanese company which owns hundreds of colleges around the world. The GEOS group has run out of money for its Australian colleges,according to Australian media reports.

Chinese embassies and consulates in Australia are negotiating with local authorities to settle the issue to safeguard students' legitimate rights.

The Education Ministry has drawn up a recommendation list of nearly 15,000 schools in 33 countries worldwide on its website. The recommended schools are relatively trustworthy and reliable.

Australia has been a preferred destination for overseas education for Indian and Chinese students.

The Australian Bureau of Statistics said the number of Chinese student enrollments was 146,000 by June 2009, up an average annual 16 percent over the past six years.

Remember, Kusunoki has told us that everything is just fine with GEOS.

Forget about the popularity of iPods for everyone!

An elementary school in Wakayama has recently had an open English-language lesson using iPod Touch, with students watching video images of a native speaker on the small display of the digital handset.

The city plans to distribute 850 of the gadgets to local schools by mid-March, as part of projects backed by the Internal Affairs and Communications Ministry.

During the English lesson at Isao Elementary School on Wednesday, an American teacher shown on the touch-screen urged students to repeat useful phrases.

Because talking to a real live person would be a waste of perfectly good technology.

It took the Consumer Affairs Agency long enough. From the Yomiuri Shimbun:

The Consumer Affairs Agency and the Tokyo metropolitan government on Thursday ordered a Tokyo-based English-language conversation school chain operator to suspend operations due to its coercive method of selling its services to university students and others.

Fortress Japan talked customers into signing contracts for the purchase of English-learning programs, often telling students, "You'll never be able to find work with your current English-language abilities."

The authorities issued the order based on the Specified Commercial Transactions Law.

A consumer organization certified by the prime minister filed a lawsuit last year arguing that Fortress Japan's way of soliciting customers was against the law. Last March, the plaintiff and the company reached the first settlement of its kind in the nation.

There are seven consumer organizations across the nation certified by the prime minister to file lawsuits against companies over aggressive sales schemes. The certifications were introduced to discourage dubious or illegal sales schemes before damages proliferate.

But the authorities said Fortress Japan continued to use unlawful sales practices after the settlement, leading to the stricter punishment by the agency.

According to the news brief released by the Consumer Affairs Agency [PDF], Fortress Japan has been ordered to cease operations for 6 months from February 19 until August 18. During that time, they are not allowed to solicit new contracts, accept applications for lessons, or conclude any contracts.

I previously wrote about Fortress Japan breaking its promise not to be evil, but they just couldn't help themselves. The article offers this example:

Last April, a man in the Kansai region who was then a third-year university student was approached by a female employee of Fortress Japan in front of his university campus. She asked him to fill out a simple survey about English conversation and job-hunting activities.

He wrote his name and phone number on the sheet, and was frequently called about attending an introduction meeting.

He finally agreed to attend a meeting, but ended up being confined in a small room together with a male employee of the company for three hours and was cajoled into signing a contract for lessons.

When the student tried to refuse, the employee looked down at him and demanded he sign the contract, telling him, "You'll never survive in the business world with such a carefree attitude."

Unbelievable. While it's good that the Consumer Affairs Agency put an end to Fortress Japan, consumers need to wise up and grow a backbone.

As scheduled, GEOS announced the measures it will take for its students affected by the closure of the schools in Australia: free English lessons.

More specifically, if you had a contract with GEOS Australia slated to start from February 2, 2010 or had made an application before January 29, GEOS will offer you 6 months of "Active lessons" at at any GEOS school in Japan at no charge. Students wishing to accept the offer have to provide GEOS with their details no later than December 29, 2010.

What a joke. Why would an international student go to Japan to to study English for 6 months? The offer only makes sense if you're Japanese. If you happen to be Vladimir Anelekov from Russia, Marcio Alves from Brazil, Pascal Fux from Switzerland, Mario Galindo from Colombia, or Filippo Zilio from Italy, you'd have to be insane to go to a non-English-speaking country to study English.

When Kusunoki says 6 months of free lessons, he means just the lessons. You can bet that any non-Japanese student interested in the lessons will have to arrange visas and accommodations on their own. You can also bet that Kusunoki is counting on a large portion of the students not taking up GEOS's offer.

The bare minimum from GEOS would have been a refund of unused tuition and a profound apology. But since Kusunoki has stated that the Australia schools weren't really part of GEOS he doesn't have to. The money siphoned from them is probably gone, too. Instead, students who traveled from around to world to Australia only to find their schools shut down receive a terse one-page memo (in Japanese no less!) posted on the GEOS website.

What an insult.

UPDATE I: Willy Wanka in comments nails it:

Haha, active lessons are the cheapest that Geos has. Up to 8 students per class. Another head costs them zero... the teacher is already there, classmates are already there, before they start they'll probably have to drop 10,000 on textbook set, and by the end of it all, they'll probably get hit up by the manager to "renew" the active contract.

GEOS's announcement of free lessons is worse than a half measure: It costs them nothing while it will cost any non-Japanese student taking up GEOS's offer everything. They will have to pay for their flight to Japan, arrange a visa and accommodations on their own, and probably have to find a part-time job, too. Since these students probably don't speak Japanese and their visas may not allow it, finding a job will be difficult if not impossible. Moreover, why would they want to work in a job that will require them to interact in Japanese? It's also not clear how many hours a week they will be studying. One or two classes a week will do nothing to improve their language skills. GEOS's offer is really no offer at all. At best, it's a way for GEOS to look like it's acting in good faith when it really isn't.

Part II of my interview on My TEFL Journey.

Where do you see the English teaching industry in Japan heading?

I think it will continue to contract largely because the aftershock of Nova’s collapse still resonates with consumers. A lot of schools still don’t seem to have learned from the lessons of Nova and continue to abuse and rip-off their customers. Students, on the other hand, are voting with their feet and seeking out other venues such as Skype-based lessons, which are incredibly cheap.

There’s also Japan’s rapidly graying population to consider. The market for students is shrinking. All of this is putting downward pressure on the job itself. Salaries may remain depressed, but eikaiwa will trundle on with a steady supply of instructors willing to work for low pay thanks to the popularity of cosplay, manga, and anime abroad. That said, it would not surprise me if one of the large eikiwas failed in the near future.

Ahead of GEOS's Wednesday scheduled announcement of the measures they will take in response to the closure of its schools in Australia, will Tsuneo Kusunoki address the giant sucking sound that everybody is hearing?

Adelaide Now:

Meanwhile, a former director of GEOS Adelaide said the company acted as cash cow for the Japanese parent company.

Gary Maserow, who resigned in October, said he had "no idea" why GEOS Adelaide and eight other Australian GEOS companies went into voluntary administration.

Six of the nine companies recorded profits in the last financial year, according to financial reports completed by BDO Kendalls.

Mr Maserow, who was also regional co-ordinator for all GEOS colleges in Australia and New Zealand, said there was "enormous pressure" placed on the company to send Australian profits to Japan.

"Japan demanded and demanded," Mr Maserow said.

Dharmadasa Ratnayake Mudiyanselage, a director of the nine Australian companies, said the companies had liquidity problems.

Mr Maserow said he had "no idea" why all of the companies went into voluntary administration.

"What happened in the last six months?" Mr Maserow said. "Because the audit was fine."

Mr Maserow dismissed suggestions the global financial crisis had contributed to the collapse.

The Australian GEOS companies had two other directors at the time of the collapse: David Emert and Japan-based Tsuneo Kusunoki, who founded GEOS in 1973.

Mr Emert and Mr Kusunoki did not respond to calls.

Administrators Ernst & Young are continuing to investigate the collapse.

Let's recap that passage:

• GEOS Japan demanded and demanded.
• Six of nine GEOS Australia companies recorded profits last year, although one director says they had liquidity problems.
• The former director of GEOS Adelaide doesn't know where the money went.
• The former director of GEOS Adelaide doesn't even know why the schools went into voluntary administration because the "audit was fine."

Healthy companies don't keel over and die over night. It would take an act of supreme stupidity on GEOS's part to siphon so much money out of its Australian schools that it would kill a popular and profitable part of its business. This suggests that there are more seriously underlying problems at GEOS. Is GEOS seriously hard up for cash? Or has Kusunoki seen the writing on the wall and chosen to line his pockets?

The stories out of Australia don't seem to match Kusunoki's assertions that the closures are a made-in-Australia problem and that everything's just fine in Japan. When the director of a school doesn't even know what happened and the people who presumably do aren't returning calls, something is wrong. Where did the money go? Moreover, if GEOS is so demanding, which overseas schools are next? Asia? North America? Europe?

Tomorrow, Mr. Kusunoki has to make some effort at helping the students he robbed of their language studies, but also needs to address the issue of the money if he intends to restore any trust in the GEOS brand.

GEOS has posted a brief note on its website [PDF] saying that it will explain what it will do in response to the school closures on Wednesday the 10th, following meetings in Australia:

この度はオーストラリア法人の各学校の閉鎖に関しまして、お騒がせ しましたことを改めてお詫び致します。

今回の件が現地法人で起こった事であり、弊社が商標権を許諾してい たとはいえ、GEOSブランドを信用してご入学頂き、今回の出来事にあ われました皆様に対して、現地での全ての説明会が終了した後、 2月10日(水)、弊社ホームページにて対応を発表致します。

From this short note, it appears that GEOS is backing away from the they-only-licensed-the-GEOS-brand excuse and realizes that the closures have damaged the GEOS brand. Maybe Kusunoki has been following Toyota's poor handling of its recall and understands that the appearance of inactivity is about the worst thing you can do in a crisis. It sounds like he or a representative went to Australia to find out what's been going on or apologize. That said, there will be no press conference on Wednesday; GEOS will make their announcement in the form of another PDF on its website. Any takers on what GEOS plans to do?

Japan Today has started a regular series on the state of the language school industry, in particular eikaiwa, written by Dean Rogers, president and CEO of Dean Morgan Co Ltd, the school that sounds like an investment company.

The first installment is an introduction laying out the ground to be covered, so there's not much meat in the article to talk about. However, I want to comment on the teacher statistics he uses. He talks about there being tens of thousands of English teachers in Japan. Fortunately, Adamu at Mutant Frog has done some research and found that the number of language instructors in Japan at the end of the 2008 was around 9,500. This is for all languages being taught in Japan, not just eikaiwa. If you factor in JETs, the number jumps to more than 10 thousand, but not tens of thousands.

If you're a regular reader of LJ, then you know that teaching English in Japan has been in the dumps for quite some time and is still in decline. The prospects for eikaiwa don't look bright when you factor in falling wages for instructors and lack of job security, the industry's tarnished image largely due to, but not limited to, the fallout from Nova's bankruptcy (lack of consumer confidence), an aging population (a shrinking customer base), and economic recession (less consumer spending and lower tax receipts putting the squeeze on local governments hiring instructors).

The series sounds promising though, so here's hoping that Dean makes the most of his columns.

TBS correspondent in Australia, Hiroki Iijima, is covering the GEOS school closures and would like to hear from you.

Help him out. Contact him at: 0419 432 758 (mobile phone in Australia) or email hiroki [at] mcmstv.com.au.

Part 1 of a two-part interview with yours truly on My TEFL Journey.

Although you once taught at an Eikaiwa, you don’t anymore. Why did you choose to leave?

A mixture of disillusionment and boredom with the job. The disillusionment came from the realization that being a salesman was more important than the teaching itself. During the hiring process in Vancouver, GEOS played up how I was beginning a career while casually throwing in, “You’re OK with approaching students and asking them to renew their contracts, right?” I wanted the job so of course I said yes.

But once in Japan, teachers and managers came and went every few months or so. There was even a stretch of at least 3 months where my school didn’t even have a manager. The weekly meetings consisted of the manager (when I had one) telling us how much we needed to make that month in terms of new student signups and contract renewals. During renewal campaigns, head office would send faxes excoriating under-performing schools, demanding that they do better. This wasn’t anything like the picture painted for me in Vancouver.

02/09 Correction: In the first interview, I wrote: Nova’s rivals, such as GEOS and AEON, quietly switched over their fee schedules to monthly schemes to avoid the wrath of their customers and avoid any potential lawsuits over lesson refunds. A reader pointed out that this was incorrect for AEON (and I believe GEOS, too). Both AEON and GEOS still charge everything up front.

I stand corrected. Don’t know where I got the notion from. Probably got it confused with children’s lessons, which are charged on a monthly basis. Thanks for the clarification.