Money and Finance
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The debate about online education is polarized — it’s either a grand solution for schools’ troubles, or it’s a menace. For example, the Economist recently reported that, because of MOOCs, “the ivory towers of academia have been shaken to their...
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Evan Osnos was also on Charlie Rose discussing this article and other China topics HERE. On the morning of July 23, 2011, passengers hurried across Beijing South Station at the final call to board bullet train D301, heading south on the world’s largest,...
- Bill Gates Reviews “for The Love Of Physics” – By Walter Lewin
Some of my favorite online videos are physics lectures by Walter Lewin of MIT. They’re posted at MIT OpenCourseWare and Academic Earth, and they’re brilliant. Lewin is an incredible teacher who’s passionate about the beauty of physics and its power...
- Cnbc: Warren Buffett Videos From Today
Link to videos: Why is Buffett in S. Korea & India? A Visit to South Korea Investing in Asia (actually a discussion about Goldman and GE) A Visit to South Korea Buffett's New Bets ...
- Newsweek Interview With Bill Gates And Randi Weingarten On Education
Our schools are lagging behind the rest of the world. Why is that? How did we fall so far behind? Gates: Well, it’s the big issue. A lot of other countries have put effort into their school systems. So part of it is the competition is better. The...
Money and Finance
The $4 Million Teacher
Thanks to David for passing this along.
Kim Ki-hoon earns $4 million a year in South Korea, where he is known as a rock-star teacher—a combination of words not typically heard in the rest of the world. Mr. Kim has been teaching for over 20 years, all of them in the country's private, after-school tutoring academies, known as hagwons. Unlike most teachers across the globe, he is paid according to the demand for his skills—and he is in high demand.
Mr. Kim works about 60 hours a week teaching English, although he spends only three of those hours giving lectures. His classes are recorded on video, and the Internet has turned them into commodities, available for purchase online at the rate of $4 an hour. He spends most of his week responding to students' online requests for help, developing lesson plans and writing accompanying textbooks and workbooks (some 200 to date).
"The harder I work, the more I make," he says matter of factly. "I like that."
I traveled to South Korea to see what a free market for teaching talent looks like—one stop in a global tour to discover what the U.S. can learn from the world's other education superpowers. Thanks in part to such tutoring services, South Korea has dramatically improved its education system over the past several decades and now routinely outperforms the U.S. Sixty years ago, most South Koreans were illiterate; today, South Korean 15-year-olds rank No. 2 in the world in reading, behind Shanghai. The country now has a 93% high-school graduation rate, compared with 77% in the U.S.
- Why I Spent 10th Grade Online - By Sophia Pink
The debate about online education is polarized — it’s either a grand solution for schools’ troubles, or it’s a menace. For example, the Economist recently reported that, because of MOOCs, “the ivory towers of academia have been shaken to their...
- Boss Rail: The Disaster That Exposed The Underside Of The Boom. (china) – By Evan Osnos
Evan Osnos was also on Charlie Rose discussing this article and other China topics HERE. On the morning of July 23, 2011, passengers hurried across Beijing South Station at the final call to board bullet train D301, heading south on the world’s largest,...
- Bill Gates Reviews “for The Love Of Physics” – By Walter Lewin
Some of my favorite online videos are physics lectures by Walter Lewin of MIT. They’re posted at MIT OpenCourseWare and Academic Earth, and they’re brilliant. Lewin is an incredible teacher who’s passionate about the beauty of physics and its power...
- Cnbc: Warren Buffett Videos From Today
Link to videos: Why is Buffett in S. Korea & India? A Visit to South Korea Investing in Asia (actually a discussion about Goldman and GE) A Visit to South Korea Buffett's New Bets ...
- Newsweek Interview With Bill Gates And Randi Weingarten On Education
Our schools are lagging behind the rest of the world. Why is that? How did we fall so far behind? Gates: Well, it’s the big issue. A lot of other countries have put effort into their school systems. So part of it is the competition is better. The...