Can anyone explain the expenses breakdown of colleges who offer Chinese-language courses to foreigners in Kunming (roughly 3,500 to 5,500 RMB per student per semester depending on the quality)? I'd be interested to find out roughly what percentage goes to teachers, what percentage to the college, and what percentage to the local government.

i agree, must be terrible to be a teacher at those places
any clues are welcome

Here's my wild guess based on my experiences here in China.

Assume an average of 50yuan/hour paid to a local Chinese teacher.

20 lecture hours/week x 20weeks/semester = 400 lecture hours.

400 x 50 = 20,000yuan/semester for your teaching staff/class/semester.

Assuming an overhead of 30,000 to cover advertising, hongbaos, etc,

A total operating cost of 50,000/class/semester.

And so, if you can get 10 students into each class then you'd break even.

Again, just a wild guess. I would imagine there are lots of ways to cut corners to lower your overhead.

the wages i've heard of are more along the lines of 20-30 rmb an hour, one friend who worked at keats was getting less than 20 per hour but that was a two/three years ago

Tonyaod, this is indeed a very wild guess!

You are too optimistic about teacher qualification and what the schools consider a fair pay. Local and Foreigner teachers are not paid the same thing at all, you got the wrong impression coming from your own experience as a foreign teacher.

I have talked with several teachers from uni and private school and they all gave me the impression to be poorly paid, but none would put a figure. Their contract forbid them from disclosing or even discussing with other staff about remuneration. Off course most teachers will talk to each other but they can't all group together and complain about the general level of pay...that would indicate that they have disclosed their pay to someone else and would be ground for a fast dismissal for breach of contract. Charming, isn't it?

However, last year i talked with a former teacher of one of the leading private school in town. Most teachers are paid less than 2000rmb/month. If a teacher teach only 20hr/week that about 25rmb/hr, but most teachers will teach well over 30hr/week. Additionally, overtime worked is compulsory and not paid. During holidays teaching staffs are not paid.

Why to they accept to work there? Pay rate are pretty standard in the private sector and universities recruit only fully qualified teachers. Universities pay rates are a little bit higher but Chinese teacher in uni to earn fantastic money either.

So to go back to your calculus.

At most 6000yuan/semester for one teacher/class/semester (2000rmb by 3 months).

Your overhead of 30,000 are probably a bit low. I would not be surprised if they are doubled, because you have to include support staffs and premises cost. So i would put overhead between 45,000 and 60,000 per semester. I run a biz myself here, so i have a pretty good idea of overhead costs. However the overhead HAS to be divided by the number of classes, a school will not run with less than 10 classes, so that put the overhead around 4,500 to 6,000/class/semester

So this give us a total operating cost of around 10,000 to 12,000/class/semester. Pretty low you think? Well it is a number that explain why school can afford to run a class with only 3-4 student and still make a bit of money out of it. It also explain why it can be such a profitable biz, a class of 10 student brings in some serious margins!

So if you can get a visa by other ways than a school you should give a service to the teachers and pay one outside a school.

i agree with JinWei's comment
and moreover if you look at keats prices on their website for example, it's just inconceivable !

i think students should also be aware of what they are involved in when they give their money away. after all as student (consumer or customer) you also have a kind of indirect responsibility, isn't it?
my opinion.

sul

I have a friend who used to work at one of the bigger private language schools here in Kunming. She made 25 yuan an hour, but had to also do a lot of extra stuff she wasn't paid for and had to wait around at the school between lessons. Additionally, there was a LOT of ways for her to lose money. If she was late to class 100 kuai docked from her pay. Same if her cell phone rang in class. 50 fine for not turning in a correct lesson plan. And here is the wild one- this school did some student evaluations of teachers. If she didnt get more than 7/10 for her teaching methods and other rated criteria she lost pay.

not mention they have no contract, can be fired at any moment without anything. i even know a teacher lost the last month salary because the school was not happy and they fired the teacher without pay the last month.

sullythegreat and poster, I can imagine that you mentioned, this school is really quite unreasonable. I also heard that this school detained some students' passports before, because the students want to go to other school to study,and they can not return the tuition fee while the students leave ahead. I'm from YUnNan Normal University, I have a classmate, she taught in this school before really unhappy.

in another post, curiously locked by gokunming (???) Tonyaod is writing about the quality of the teachers telling that even they hire college students and pay them 20-30 rmb per hour, you'll still have a native speaker with not bad pronunciation (and it seems to be ok, correct me if i'm wrong).

i think this is unbelievable ! How can you expect any quality when you pay people that less and moreover if they have no experience and or no qualification to do that.

as for the problem with english teachers, i agree. there is also a similar problem. but it's not because greedy schools offer position to teach english to the first arrived, even not experienced or qualified that you can say that's ok for chinese teachers as well. This is not acceptable in both situation.

and let me add something, according to the price it seems they pay the teachers (ok you don't have only that expense) and the price they charged their students, the profit they do for the quality they serve is just insane.
what do you think?