miércoles, 11 de agosto de 2010

The worst Spanish languages academies: Enforex and Don Quijote

If you want a fast education, you should go to Enforex and Don Quijote, the Burger King of education. They are expensive, bad and useless, but they have one of the best corporate policy I have seen.
They work with travel agencies, they pay a lot of money with the condition that the agency only can show info about Enforex and Don Quijote, but there is a trick: Enforex and Don Quijote are the same academy. The students think they can choose between two offers, but in fact is the same and in both cases is a bad offer.
There are no methods or pedagogical objectives in these academies. The books and materials they use are the worst you can use, but they edited them. Therefore, the books are really cheap, although the students buy them at high price.
In fact, the only target is offer to students expensive “sangria” and “tapas” in order to help them to enjoy their time. ¿Learning…? It doesn’t matter anyone there.
I have been working with them this last month and I have tried to teach Spanish to my students. I did it, despite the books and the academic policy. In my city, Valencia, there are a lot of better and smaller academies, but they can’t promote themselves as Enforex and Don Quijote do it. There is a paradox, because these small academies are better and cheaper, but students spend more time to find them. The consequence: Enforex and Don Quijote are trying to buy at low price the competence in order to become the only academy. They use different brands with the intention to cover the monopolistic control of the market.
Of course, they pay a hilarious salary to the professors: less than eight Euros by hour. However, as professors could not teach, it is not so bad salary.

PD: Next month, I start to work again in university. When they read these words, obviously, they will want to fire me.