Former Nova CEO Saruhashi on why Nova went under: Bad quality instructors and the broken reservation system

9 Responses to “Former Nova CEO Saruhashi on why Nova went under: Bad quality instructors and the broken reservation system”

1. Kraig on November 14th, 2007 3:04 am

   You. Have. To. Be. Kidding. Me.

   He’s sunk to new lows. He must be down to huffing gas or drinking One Cup. Even the mention that inspectors were looking for info on instructors is deliberately misleading. Maybe METI told him that to make him feel better.

2. novawhiz on November 14th, 2007 7:44 am

   “METI inspectors were gathering evidence concerning the bad quality of instructors”

   No, there never has been any mention of the quality of instructors ever being a consideration in the raids either as reported in the news or in the METI releases. Besides, the METI would not be concerned with the “quality” of the instructors, just the business aspects of Nova. Even in the furthest stretch of the imagination that students were unhappy with the instructors, and decided to cancel… that alone is not problematic, it’s when they can’t get a reasonable refund that the METI takes notice.

   furthermore, as reported in the Asahi editorial: http://www.asahi.com/english/Herald-asahi/TKY200706160085.html
   Nova was already flagged for administrative ‘guidance’ since 2002 (around the same time that a surge in complaints about Nova had accumulated at the National Consumer Affairs Center of Japan). Nova had been able to hold off the METI but the additional complaints that skyrocketed in 2006 were too much to ignore.

   “bad quality of instructors” sounds more to me like Saruhashi was thinking of the bad quality of the meat that ‘meat hope’ had problems with. Why not say “bad quality of instruction”? the instruction was good but ‘the Instructors’ were not? Not enough white instructors? not enough blond instructors? hummmm…..

3. Mr. Noah on November 14th, 2007 8:12 am

   I certainly hope Sahashi is telling the truth about the investigation. And it’s about friggin’ time.

   Go METI! Never thought I’d be saying those words!

4. Jose on November 14th, 2007 4:36 pm

   Mr Noah, what in the world do you mean? At those low prices students should have expected professionally qualified teachers to be teaching them? That simply wasn’t possible. Do you think that you’re somehow better than the thousands of people who bought their food from their Nova salary? Seems a bit unclear to me.

5. Ms. Pipkin on November 14th, 2007 6:09 pm

   Nobody has yet metioned this point so I will add it to all the other opinions
   I do agree with, even the ones that contradict each other. The company wasted untold
   gobs of money on unproductive ventures: many school with few students and misadventures
   into opening branches in foriegn countries (China, Taiwan, etc.). This huge negative
   cash flow forced the company to abuse its only true resource, the students. And they
   certainly spoke with their yen as they left the company in droves and demanded their
   money back.. It is clear case
   of management by pipe-dream. Nova had a good business model years ago, but people got
   greedy. It is certainly a small mind that plays the blame game. Nova had very hard working
   teachers and staff and we all enjoyed our jobs and tried to be the best we could be (there
   are some exceptions, I know). Any deficiency on the teachers part is also a fault of the
   companies policies. They gave minimal training and intentionally kept teacher ignorant
   of genuine EFL teaching principles in favor of that stupid shit they called Nova super
   pseudo-science. What a joke. “I hold a folder” Well, guess what. Now I’m holding a
   fucking cup in my hand looking for my next meal.

6. Jeremy on November 14th, 2007 7:54 pm

   He’s trying to keep the focus off of his SHIT monetary policy.

   The company has be mired in huge debt for years. He was fiscally

   irresponsible. Pissed the money away on his office, salary, opened

   schools with borrowed money (that competed with his other schools),etc.

   Basically, he broke every common sense business rule. All of that

   had nothing to do with instructors, period.

7. Mr. Noah on November 15th, 2007 3:46 am

   Mr Noah, what in the world do you mean? At those low prices students should have expected professionally qualified teachers to be teaching them? That simply wasn’t possible. Do you think that you’re somehow better than the thousands of people who bought their food from their Nova salary? Seems a bit unclear to me.

   The main problem is that neither the government nor any professional association maintained any private-school teacher qualification standards. This meant that students had no way of knowing the difference between the qualifications of NOVA teachers and those of other schools. Obviously the best way to remedy this situation, given the size of the English education industry, would be to have either a government regulatory board or a professional organization of English teachers that could issue some kind of guide or rating that would give students some sort of way to anticipate school quality without wasting tons of their hard-earned yen on pre-paid lessons.

   As for your idea that the very cheapness of NOVA lessons should have indicated the low quality of its teachers, that idea (the “price is a signal of quality” idea) is on pretty shaky ground in the economics world.

   As for me being better than people who bought their food from their NOVA salaries, I have to say that I would take no pride from working for a company that basically makes its money by scamming people. That would be true whether I got paid $25k on a NOVA salary, $250k denying life-saving treatment to patients for a health-insurance company, or $2.5M cooking companies’ books at a crooked accounting firm. In fact, those latter two would make me feel much worse than working for NOVA. But, back when I lived in Japan and knew some NOVA teachers, all the good honest people at the organization thought it was despicable. That should say something.

8. W. Anthony Malcolm on November 17th, 2007 12:39 am

   If an army is sometimes the reflection of its leader then NOVA, in general, is a reflection of its past leader. His poor leadership allowed for lackluster attitudes, bad skill sets, and poor teaching development. Luckily teachers didn’t let this poor leadership repress them. I for one, gained a masters degree in management, completed a TEFL course, joined JALT, and did various other things to develop my teaching skills. I did all this in the span of 2 and a half years. So much could have been done, but he failed to give promise and hope and encouragement.

   He let is pride get in the way, and forgot one important aspect of good leadership - listening. He failed to use the numbers of people at his disposal to remedy past bad situations. He could have opened things up to a diverse pool of employees, courted ideas, and then acted on those deemed worthy of deeper exploration. But he didn’t and now people are living with confusion, uncertainty, and some hope. Even now he is still holding his defiant position, and wants to “fix” things by himself. This is a perfect illustration of why ‘pride’ is one of the seven deadly sins.

   Be careful!

9. Shawn on November 28th, 2007 9:50 pm

   This is very late, but an astute reader seems to have found the source of the “poor quality instructors” quote. This press conference Q&A, points out Nova having problems with securing good-quality instructors (質の良い外国人講師の確保が難しかった). It’s not that the instructors were bad, as Sahashi insinuated, but Nova’s rapid expansion made it difficult for them to get a hold of enough of them.

   FWIW

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