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Money-driven learning
An institute allegedly induces students with money to take courses reimbursable from the Continuing Education Fund, Johnny Lee reports
A private education institute faces
investigation for allegedly using a
commission system to attract students
to enrol on its courses that are
reimbursable from a government fund.
The suspected problematic practices were revealed after Varsity talked to some former employees of Genesis Education Centre in Mong Kok. The institute allegedly tried to attract students to its courses by raising the commission for its promotional staff if they also took the classes that are reimbursable from the Continuing Education Fund (CEF).
The CEF, set up in 2002, is managed
by the Student Financial Assistance
Agency under the Education and
Manpower Bureau (EMB). It encourages
life-long learning by reimbursing adult
students up to HK$10,000 on completion
of courses approved by the bureau.
The CEF said it would investigate to
see if the fund was being abused and
whether the control on the course
providers' recruitment strategy would
need to be tightened. The EMB also said
it would launch an investigation if it had
received information about such
recruitment practices, as using financial
inducements to recruit students was illegal.
A spokesman for the Genesis
Education Centre refused to comment.
The private institute, which offers courses
on subjects like languages, is a registered
school run by another educational
centre named Hong Kong Universal
Education.
Candy Lam, a student of the Chinese University of Hong Kong, who used to work as a promoter at the Genesis Education Centre, said if a promotional staff took the reimbursable courses of CEF at the institute, his commission would be doubled from about HK$1,000 to about HK$2,000 for each of the students referred.
The incentive had prompted
Miss Lam to sign up for a Putonghua
course. She said most of her classmates
of the reimbursable courses were also
promoters at the institute and she was
asked to emphasise to potential students how they could be reimbursed up to
HK$10,000 by the CEF when enrolling
the courses, which cost about HK$12,500
each.
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Genesis Education Centre is in Mong Kok.