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posted by mrpg on Thursday December 22 2016, @07:50AM   Printer-friendly
from the ni-hao-ma dept.

Today, Mi is 33 and founder of a startup that aims to give Chinese kids the kind of education American children receive in top U.S. schools. Called VIPKid, the company matches Chinese students aged five to 12 with predominantly North American instructors to study English, math, science and other subjects. Classes take place online, typically for two or three 25-minute sessions each week.

Mi is capitalizing on an alluring arbitrage opportunity. In China, there are hundreds of millions of kids whose parents are willing to pay up if they can get high-quality education. In the U.S. and Canada, teachers are often underpaid—and many have quit the profession because they couldn't 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'll expand to 25,000 teachers and 200,000 children.


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  • (Score: 4, Interesting) by aclarke on Thursday December 22 2016, @01:45PM

    by aclarke (2049) on Thursday December 22 2016, @01:45PM (#444704) Homepage
    I came here to say something similar. I'm not sure why Phoenix666 decided to lump Canadian teachers into the summary. Here are some links with data:

    Canadian teachers among top paid worldwide, study finds [thestar.com]
    OECD finds us fourth highest of developed nations, according to new report on the state of education around the world.

    Teacher pay: Canada near the top of the OECD class [theglobeandmail.com]

    Where The World's Best-Paid Teachers Can Be Found [huffingtonpost.ca]
    Canada is #3, USA is #6 in this particular metric.

    Teachers in Ontario at least have a very strong union. At a time when fewer people get full benefits with pension, the contrast is becoming more stark and obvious. I think teaches are worth what we pay them but overall their compensation packages with pension are very good here.
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  • (Score: 2) by aclarke on Thursday December 22 2016, @01:57PM

    by aclarke (2049) on Thursday December 22 2016, @01:57PM (#444711) Homepage

    I see the reference to underpaid Canadian teachers comes from the Bloomberg article, not from Phoenix666's posterior.

  • (Score: 3, Informative) by Phoenix666 on Thursday December 22 2016, @02:51PM

    by Phoenix666 (552) on Thursday December 22 2016, @02:51PM (#444725) Journal

    That's straight from the article. No lumping on my part.

    --
    Washington DC delenda est.