Shih Tzu (![[info]](http://p-stat.livejournal.com/img/userinfo.gif){kind=small} shihtzu) wrote,@ 2007-09-19 17:34:00 |
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NOVA going nova
This may not be particularly notable to non-nihongo types, but for those of you who've lived in Japan or done the eikaiwa (English conversation school) thing, you might be interested in the news that NOVA, easily the biggest and most inescapable chain in Japan, is completely falling apart in the wake of massive debt and a widely-reported scandal earlier this year that called attention to some of their shady business practices.
Gaijin forums are buzzing with reports and rumors of mass teacher resignations, schools closing, teachers and Japanese staff not getting paid, teachers getting evicted from NOVA-subsidized apartments after NOVA allegedly fails to contribute its share of the rent... It's looking pretty nasty.
I was never with NOVA, but I did do AEON (a rival eikaiwa school) a couple years ago, and... my feelings are mixed. It's never good when people are out of a job, especially if they're settled in with families and depend on it, but I can't say that the industry itself wasn't asking for this kind of thing to happen. AEON may not have been quite as notorious as NOVA among the gaijin crowd ("stands for NO-VAcations, har!"), but it's pretty much cut from the same sleazy cloth, with materials of questionable educational value and "individual counseling sessions" which teachers were ordered to use to sell extra CDs and more expensive classes to the students. And of course, none of the teachers actually have an education background (a fact all the schools cheerfully omit); applicants that do have one are actually much less likely to be accepted. People actually qualified to teach English wind up at universities instead.
So I wish the best for the thousands of employees, Japanese and otherwise, but honestly I hope this either improves the industry or destroys it. Does anyone reading this have any eikaiwa experiences? Zoe, you still around?
This may not be particularly notable to non-nihongo types, but for those of you who've lived in Japan or done the eikaiwa (English conversation school) thing, you might be interested in the news that NOVA, easily the biggest and most inescapable chain in Japan, is completely falling apart in the wake of massive debt and a widely-reported scandal earlier this year that called attention to some of their shady business practices.
Gaijin forums are buzzing with reports and rumors of mass teacher resignations, schools closing, teachers and Japanese staff not getting paid, teachers getting evicted from NOVA-subsidized apartments after NOVA allegedly fails to contribute its share of the rent... It's looking pretty nasty.
I was never with NOVA, but I did do AEON (a rival eikaiwa school) a couple years ago, and... my feelings are mixed. It's never good when people are out of a job, especially if they're settled in with families and depend on it, but I can't say that the industry itself wasn't asking for this kind of thing to happen. AEON may not have been quite as notorious as NOVA among the gaijin crowd ("stands for NO-VAcations, har!"), but it's pretty much cut from the same sleazy cloth, with materials of questionable educational value and "individual counseling sessions" which teachers were ordered to use to sell extra CDs and more expensive classes to the students. And of course, none of the teachers actually have an education background (a fact all the schools cheerfully omit); applicants that do have one are actually much less likely to be accepted. People actually qualified to teach English wind up at universities instead.
So I wish the best for the thousands of employees, Japanese and otherwise, but honestly I hope this either improves the industry or destroys it. Does anyone reading this have any eikaiwa experiences? Zoe, you still around?
