「京大医学部４名合格講師」による受験対策講座（１４４）
私は名古屋の河合塾学園、コンピューター総合学園HAL、名古屋外国語専門学校など７つの予備校、塾、専門学校で１４年間講師をさせてもらって気づいたことがある。
予備校ビジネスの大黒柱は授業料。塾生の方になるべく多くの授業を受けてもらい、お金を落としてほしい。模試や講習会も受けてほしい。
だから、本番より難しい「模擬テスト」で低い得点を示して生徒の方の危機感をあおり入塾を勧めたり、講習会に出席を勧める。このビジネスを成立させるために、模試を無料にしている塾も多い。
もちろん、入塾させてしまえばこちらのもの。無料テストの実施経費は授業料に上乗せして、しっかり回収する。これは、実質入塾しなかった模試の受験生の受験料を入塾させた生徒に支払わせているのだけれど、お気づきだろうか。
他にもタレントやアニメを使って大々的に宣伝を行うため、マスコミに支払う巨額経費も授業料に上乗せしている。この授業料の大部分は生徒の方の学力向上とは何の関係もない。
I have realized something in my 14 years of teaching at seven prep schools, cram schools, and vocational schools in Nagoya, including Kawaijuku Gakuen, Computer Computing Academy HAL, and Nagoya College of Foreign Languages.
The mainstay of the prep school business is tuition. They want students to take as many classes as possible and drop money. They also want them to take mock exams and workshops.
Therefore, they encourage students to enter the school by showing low scores in "mock tests," which are more difficult than the real tests, to arouse their sense of crisis and encourage them to enter the school or attend the workshops. In order to make this business possible, many cram schools offer mock tests free of charge.
Of course, once the student is admitted to the school, the school is ours. The cost of the free test is added to the tuition fee and recovered. In effect, they are making the students pay for the fees of the mock test who did not enroll in the school.
In addition, the school pays a huge amount of money to the mass media for advertising using celebrities and cartoons, which is added to the tuition fee. Most of these fees have nothing to do with improving the students' academic performance.