Japan Today - News - Gov't reluctant to get involved in bailing out Nova

TOKYO — The government indicated Friday that the bankruptcy of Japan's biggest foreign language school chain is a matter for the private sector.

While seeking to get other schools to accept an estimated 420,000 Nova students, the Ministry of Economy, Trade and Industry has refused to become directly involved in turning around Nova, which was granted court protection the same day from creditors following nonpayment of wages to employees.

"Because Nova is a listed company, the principle of self-responsibility must be applied," METI Minister Akira Amari said at a news conference.

Nova "should have taken necessary measures more quickly," Amari said, adding that he had received reports that Nova President Nozomu Sahashi had shown "lax" judgment.

Sahashi had repeatedly turned down ministry calls for him to explain the workings of the school's management, saying he was busy raising funds, before he finally visited the ministry in the mid-October, officials said.

In a separate news conference, Shinji Fujino, METI's service industry division director, said it is not appropriate for the government to bail out the company with taxpayers' money.

"It is not as if we are authorized by any specific laws to help Nova," Fujino said.

The ministry said it is asking the Japan Association for the Promotion of Foreign Language Education, an industry body, to call on its member schools to accept Nova students.

It expressed the hope that Nova will continue operations, rather than be completely liquidated.

METI also requested consumer credit companies not to seek loan repayments from Nova students at a time when they are unable to take lessons because Nova has ceased operations. Around 20% of Nova students paid their tuition with loans from these firms.

However, the government appeared reluctant to play an active role in looking for companies to help sponsor Nova's possible rehabilitation.

Fujino said the ministry will respect the opinions of court-appointed bankruptcy administrators.

"Still, we worry that there might not be a company that can take over the businesses of a huge entity like Nova," he said.

Ridiculous. So the government can wipe out a company with a grossly overbearing penalty, then ignore all the students and teachers screwed when it goes down in flames? I wonder if the teachers shouldn't start a lawsuit, listing Sahashi right next to Meti for destroying their livelihoods, in some cases stranding them in Japan with no income, home, or food.

One can dream.

>> All I've heard always about Nova is that they are just exploiting and nobody really learns English there. Is that true?

Not really. Nova's sales tactics were pretty pushy... like many other businesses they based their business around constantly trying to get new customers, which was unsustainable in the end. (like banks, cell phone companies, etc..)

However on the whole the english lessons weren't bad. They weren't so good at teaching grammar, but then its a conversation school after all. And obviously they didnt suit everyone... but i've seen some people make massive improvements, and lots of people had fun and made a lot of friends.

The problem with nova was the management overexpansion and the pushy sales... not the teaching.
(and in terms of conditions and pay for teachers they seem to be nearer the top than the bottom of the schools pile...)

As for the government. I suspect nova would have gone under eventually anyway, simply due to the idiotic expansion policy... but the punishment they handed out did seem highly excessive considering that (imho) I've seen loads of other companies doing similar practices and not getting punished. (in the english school sector, and others). Was nova's refund policy really much different to the one i have with AU for my mobile? Doesn't seem so.

Regardless of whether Nova would have gone down anyway, it seemed pretty short sighted of the government to actively take it down. (which most people knew would be the likely result). Simply because it's mean that students, teachers and taxpayers are now all worse off.
What they should have done is gone after the management... not the whole school.

Heck, the government bailed out the banks, why not Nova?

A balanced and sensible post. You're quite right, other
outfits do exactly the same thing and treat instructors as expendable
commodities on a never ending conveyor belt of newbies just wanting
to come to Japan. I've assisted lawyers with translation for free legal assistance for numerous foreigners with legal problems and heard some really awful stories
of downright human rights abuses from some eikaiwa outfits. Stolen wages, Tax frauds (on the part of the schools against instructors) Playing two teachers off against one another for the same job; to whit; inviting both to come over from the US then picking one. The other as a kind of back-up in case one pulled out suddenly. Obviously they didn't know about each other and that's happened numerous times with teary eyed and suddenly stranded people here looking for a way to get home.

Never once had a Nova instructor come in in all those years with a work-related complaint. Not a single once. Privately, I know several who've stayed with the company many years so it just isn't, or rather wasn't that bad.

Some of these ex Nova whingers are gonna what's hit them when they try working for some of these other places....Dream on whiners, dream on.

who worked at nova. Hope you can find something

Those loan companies should certainly seek repayment from the students. It's not their fault that the students chose a bad school.

nutsagain, i think more than a few of us are sick of your, "I've assisted lawyers with translation" story. give it a rest would you?

METI is not looking at Nova as a Japanese company; it's looking at it as an entity that has hired foreigners. Because of this faulty point of view METI cannot help this company with taxpayers' money because if it does, it would have helped the foreigners indirectly, which is unacceptable and taboo for METI. In METI's mind, foreigners are supposed to work here and pay tax not to use taxpayers' money to rehabilitate themselves.

But then again the biggest group hurt by this are the students. Sure, foreign teachers got shafted but the Japanese staff didn't get paid TWO months salary. They were just told to 'Ganbare'. The foreign rank and file were the last to get the shaft because Monkeybridge knew they'd be the first to walk. I think there sure is discrimination against foreigners here but there's more discrimination against regular Japanese people. First they're brainwashed to buy into their cultural superiority myth (although that's declining lately) and then told it isn't "Japanese" to complain. Neat trick.

nutsagain, i think more than a few of us are sick of your, "I've assisted lawyers with translation" story.

Why so grouchy? Nuts doesn't bang on constantly about doing translation work for lawyers - first time I've heard about it. I think you're being more than a little unfair here.

It will be very difficult to get foriegn teachers back to Japan if the government does not assist all those teachers and students.Another black black mark for Japans Government

Ridiculous. So the government can wipe out a company with a grossly overbearing penalty, then ignore all the students and teachers screwed when it goes down in flames? I wonder if the teachers shouldn't start a lawsuit, listing Sahashi right next to Meti for destroying their livelihoods, in some cases stranding them in Japan with no income, home, or food.

apart from government advising consumer loan companies not to collect returns from the students who used such companies, advising other schools to accept these students, and issuing standard welfare packages to teachers.

goverment is right, this is a private sector and they shouldnt bother. nova founder whatever his name is proved to be a lousy business man. From the looks of it, so are all other language school owners as this would be the easiest thing to buy out all of their stock right now.

Some good arguments here. It would seem to me that the boss and president who started the company must have been quite a smart business person as he built the company up from a few schools in the early eighties into the largest chain of English schools in Japan. When I worked at NOVA we were told by the staff that he was extremely wealthy and went on overseas trips all the time. Perhaps his fatal flaw was arrogance rather than incompetence as even back then there were some glaring problems that the company did either not appear to notice or didn't care about. NOVA wasn't a bad place to work and I actually liked teaching there, however the company did not appear to care enough about customers or teacher morale. Students often complained that they were being pressured into buying more lesson tickets every time they came in. You couldn't get a refund of fees without paying a large fine. There were numerous cases of teachers being sacked for no good reason like staying too long! I got the impression they were only thinking about profits and not thinking enough about the possible legal implications of their business decisions. How did they get away with the fact that thousands of their teachers did not pay their local taxes over the years? I remember the recruiter never even mentioned we had to pay them!

you didn't hear about it so it didn't happen - most children grow out of the ego phase by about 4. the same problem nutsagain seems to suffer from. nova teachers didn't complain to him so nova wasn't that bad. Nuts has posted the same comment everytime nova has made the headlines. i maybe be gouchy but i think that is fair enough.

But then again the biggest group hurt by this are the students. Sure, foreign teachers got shafted but the Japanese staff didn't get paid TWO months salary. They were just told to 'Ganbare'.

This has been said elsewhere, but no, the biggest group HURT are not the students. You have to quantify the hurt. The students were paying for a service, a luxury service for some. They will not become homeless over this. They will not be borrowing money to eat or catch trains.

As for the staff, sure they were unpaid longer than the teachers, but they often got told more than the teachers too. Lengthy Japanese faxes were sent to them, whilst in the beginning only short ones, if anything, were sent for the teachers. Staff were told from the beginning to "ganbare", teachers only eventually told to do the same after having the wool pulled over their eyes.

Even now, Nova planned to have meetings for both teachers and Japanese staff to inform them of what is going on, but in at least some cases these were cancelled and became Japanese staff only affairs. Add to this the fact that Nova said they would translate their notices on their website into English to support their foreign staff but they have yet to do so, and you can see that foreign teachers are being left out again, with those most newly arrived extremely confused and lost in the situation they're in.

Both the students and staff have families to support them in this country, whilst most foreigners do not. Japanese students or staff do not need airlines offering them cheap escape flights back to their home country.

I just don't see how you can make the quoted comment.