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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.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday December 22 2016, @05:45PM
Not everybody can teach well. Just because lots of people want to teach, that does not mean they would do a good job at it. Given the impact giving a good education to a child can have in the economy $87,000 a year per teacher is a pittance. It is in effect investing in the future of the country.
You need good wages to retain good teachers, sure some will take low wages for the love of teaching, but you can't expect all the good ones to. So if those wages result in a good education for the children, then those teachers are certainly not overpaid.
(Score: 2) by Nerdfest on Thursday December 22 2016, @08:50PM
You're assuming that the teachers in place are good, which is not always the case, and the unions generally involved ensure that that does not change easily or quickly. Also, studies generally show that money is not as big a factor as you would think.