To everyone thinking of studying Chinese.
All the schools are rip-off in term of their tuition. Explain to me how it's possible to have a price difference of several thousand kuai studying in the top locations in Beijing with Beijing standard accent teacher that are all at least as well qualified as the Kunming teachers are. They offer exactly the same services but for 10 hours per week of small class study you pay 700Yuan. Yep!!! I will spell it out sevenhundred renminbi.

That is the only reason I am not studying in Kunming. It should be cheaper here than Beijing or Shanghai. In the Beijing Cultural University BLCU it's is 8000Yuan for the whole deal. Accom, classes, Visa, all inclusive.

Please Dear principal, explain that to me. How is it possible that the same (less good) is more expensive in the backyar of China than it is for higher quality in the Storefronts of China.

For everyone thinking of studying Chinese, get a Chinese tutor or enroll in a University course. It's more expensive but at least you don't waste it to some greedy laoban.

Really?? I wanted to go to Beijing originally but I ruled it out because it was too expensive. Just looked at BLCU's website and it's like 23,200 RMB for their 1 year program, that's not including accommodation (which of course is very expensive in Beijing). I also seem to remember the private language schools are significantly more expensive. Have I missed something?

Shanghai was about 6500/semester in 2007, without accom.

chris8080, I think you are right. Before coming to Kunming I was in Beijing for six years and it was my impression Chinese classes were pretty expensive. I checked the adverts on the internet and see the same rather high numbers you do. It would be nice if The Dudeson's could tell us how many weeks of classes and where we could find a low priced school in Beijing.

KCEL is about 20RMB/hour per student for classes and the teachers get about 25RMB/hour for teaching. Teachers get paid a lot more in Beijing.

Clue is the "greedy laoban" remark. Some people have no idea what costs to run a business. You know, of course, any profit is exploitation and anyone that makes a profit is greedy!

This may be a little off topic but when I was teaching at Web International language school, the tuition for the students was the same as in Shanghai (Shanghai is the headquarter). I thought that was crazy seeing that the cost of living is totally different. The tuition was some ridiculous price. I guess if you can get away with it then by all means try.

Market forces dictate what you pay for services (incl teaching) and salaries.
The same applies to some of the rents, and property prices that business has to pay.

tigertiger, while I agree that market forces should dictate prices, I suspect that price fixing, in the interest of harmony and to avoid competition, plays a larger role than the market. Remember the 2011 well organized doubling of tuition?

I suspect the low pay teachers of Chinese get is also well organized. We as consumers benefit from low teacher pay, but, can expect prices to behave in a similar harmonious way.

Everything is going up. Rent, water, tuition, food, fees, parking. Why is it that teacher's salary both Chinese and foreigner are not going up? Something is really wrong. Geezer raised an excellent point.

As long as there are enough people willing to sign contracts at the old rate/or lower, then wages will not increase. There is an economics term for this.
Consider it a market force.

The private school for 700Kuai per month, 10 hours per week, is called di qiu cun, global village i think is their english name.

one branch in Wudaokou the other one in WangJing. But that is just one of the huge amount of schools. Dunno if the price is still the same but I know that the teachers are all from around Beijing and very well qualified.

That was a few years back but I doubt they went as crazy as Kunming.

My point was not that it is necessarily (always) cheaper, than Kunming, but that we are talking about two different cities and standards.
Beijing and Kunming are worlds apart. Especially in labour costs.

I don't know the exact prices for the Universities these days either but when I told my bussy who still studies at BLCU he told me it's ridiculous what the charges are in Kunming, he wanted to move out here. But chose against it becasue Kunming is much more expensive in terms of tuition.

Plus what I did, I took a university course (not language related) that i wanted to study and they gave me free Chinese classes with max 5 students, for free. In the end It was cheaper than the whole language course in BLCU plus I could study two courses.
A lot of universities did that to get the lucrative liuxuesheng.

I don't know hwo it works in Kunming but I remember that I bargained for my tuition price in Beijing, yeah I know...it's funny to bargain for a tuition. So I wouldn't take the price on their website for granted. A friend of mine walked with me in the admin building as he charmed the admin lady. So the rmb's fell by the thousands, I even joked, that it could be a career option.

All that is a few years back but even if the price in Kunming is the same as in Beijing, it's ridiculous.

Plus I was running school on several occasions and it's easier and cheaper to run a school (with profits) than most people think.

HEaring what they get and how much they pay the teachers I am sure KEATS is doing fine, plus the extra cash they make on other services.