>> Now you enter China with the goal to pen language schools for them to learn English, Spanish etc. They are only Mandarim spoken and only the highly educated speak foreign language and this put the man on the street at disadvantage. <<
US won’t pay its teachers, but China’s tiger mums are splashing out cash to hire them online
Parents flocking to firms that promise to give children the kind of education Americans receive – via the internet
scmp.com
Cindy Mi leans forward on a couch in her sun-filled Beijing office to explain how she first got interested in education.
She loved English so much as a child that she spent her lunch money on books and magazines to practise. By 15, she was good enough to start teaching other students. At 17, she dropped out of high school to start a language-instruction company with her uncle.
Today, Mi is 33 and the founder of a start-up that aims to give Chinese children the kind of education American children receive in top US schools.
The company, called VIPKid, matches Chinese students aged five to 12 with predominantly North American instructors to study English, mathematics, science and other subjects.
Classes take place online, typically for two or three 25-minute sessions each week.
Mi is capitalising on an alluring arbitrage opportunity. In China, there are hundreds of millions of children whose parents are willing to pay if they can get high-quality education.
In the US and Canada, teachers are often underpaid – and many have quit the profession because they could not make a decent living.
Growth has been explosive. The three-year-old company started this year with 200 teachers and has grown to 5,000, now working with 50,000 children. Next year, Mi anticipates she will expand to 25,000 teachers and 200,000 children.
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