Your Opinion on Tuition & Attendance / Training

[Tiger1962]

As an instructor the tuition is relied upon consistantly to pay the bills. However if a student of mine comes to me and has a certain situation where they will not be able to train for a month, I will not require them to pay for time they can not train. You have to take care of your students, after all, they are what allow you to do what you love, train them and practice the art you enjoy. When you treat them as a number and are hard-lined you lose them permanently rather than for that month.

Lvmalone

That's exactly true.

It doesn't mean you are automatically going to promote them or kissing up to your customers. It just means that if you have serious students who train and then if "life" gets in the way occasionally and they can not train, you take care of them the way you mentioned.

[bushido_man96]

As an instructor the tuition is relied upon consistantly to pay the bills. However if a student of mine comes to me and has a certain situation where they will not be able to train for a month, I will not require them to pay for time they can not train. You have to take care of your students, after all, they are what allow you to do what you love, train them and practice the art you enjoy. When you treat them as a number and are hard-lined you lose them permanently rather than for that month.

Lvmalone

That is why I prefer monthly payments. Usually, they can tell if they won't be around much of the month. But, things do happen. I agree that you have to take care of your students. After a time, I would give a courtesy call, just to let them know that we miss them at the class.

[axispower]

I've been paying for my kids' (and others) karate lessons monthly for over twenty years. In that time we've taken exactly one month off - a month when we were out of state for three weeks and would be unable to get ANY training in.

Once upon a time the owner of one of the schools we attended came to me and said "We're converting over to a contract basis and setting everyone up so we can direct debit their checking accounts for tuition. I'll need you to sign one of these for me."

To which I said, "Sorry. I don't do contracts."

His response? "Okay. Just keep on paying like you have been and we won't worry about the contract."

It is what it is.

Now, with all that said . . . if I were going to put together some sort of program the punch-card idea for people who train irregularly is a good one.

For new students I like the idea of INITIALLY contracting with the student/parents to attain a certain belt level in a certain amount of time. For example, a white belt might be expected to make it to orange in 90 days, so you could have a 3 month contract to get the student to Orange. At that level if you need to hold them a little longer at individual belt levels you could - but at least you'd have 3 months to get the student on the right track.

[Tiger1962]

Once upon a time the owner of one of the schools we attended came to me and said "We're converting over to a contract basis and setting everyone up so we can direct debit their checking accounts for tuition. I'll need you to sign one of these for me."

To which I said, "Sorry. I don't do contracts."

His response? "Okay. Just keep on paying like you have been and we won't worry about the contract."

That's very good - - I don't believe in contracts either and would also refuse to sign one. That being said, *if* I was ever the owner of a school, I wouldn't put a timeline on my students achieving belt / rank promotion. I could give them a very rough estimate, however, it would not be accurate anyway, because everyone progresses at a different rate and if they weren't ready or if they didn't know all their required stuff, they would definitely NOT be promoted. To me, paying one's tuition doesn't guarantee an automatic promotion. (It never did for me anyway).

My 2 cents

[bushido_man96]

I don't agree with the rank timeline, either. Not a good sign, to me.

[Daisho]

god I'd missed so many payments in the past, I thank god our sensei tends to become very involved in our personal lives.

I spent consecutive months handling the books and scrubbing mats to make up for not having the money to help with our mortgage. I've also helped paint the dojo twice, and tear up the floor and lay down a hardwood floor when our sensei first bought the property.

[Tiger1962]

Daisho - that's a good deal to have to even things out.