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Wednesday, February 03, 2010

GEOS on its way out?

Rumor has it GEOS is in trouble. It turns out at least their schools in Australia have recently closed their doors.

GEOS is one of the original big 3 English school companies in Japan. They were NOVA, GEOS, and AEON, with ECC and Berlitz following closely in number of schools and students. The McDonald's of eikaiwa, NOVA, is largely gone despite certain regional schools still in operation under different management.

Is GEOS suffering from the recent economic downturn? Some online discussion can be found on fuckedgaijin here, more legitimate news here about their Australia school closing.

We don't know how far down this is going to go. It could be a bad Wednesday, or a game ender. We'll see. When English language learning giant NOVA went down, it was all triggered by a bad refund policy, followed by government intervention, finally a major drop in student enrollment = debt. One bad move is all it takes.

a little update
From GEOS Japan's website a pdf letter was posted to address their Japanese students who are stuck in Australia about obtaining a refund and transferring to other available facilities:
オーストラリアへ留学中のお客様各位
生徒様、弊社英会話を希望されている方、また関係者の皆様に多大のご不安をお掛けしておりますこと、深くお詫び申しあげます。(株)ジオスおよび国内の各校、オーストラリア以外の海外校は通常通り運営されております。オーストラリア関係機関より生徒様向けの説明会の日程が一部発表になりましたので一部を抜粋してお知らせ致します。授業料返金、転校等の詳細につきましては、契約エージェントまたはHPにてご確認をお願い致します。
http://www.englishaustralia.com.au/index.cgi?E=hsvalidator&template=student&PT=dd&Lev1=students07&Lev2=stu_clos10

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