Are Int'l School Fees a Scam? Stu Jay Raj Crunches the Numbers [S7.E71]

Greg 00:00:04 On this episode, we chat to Sujay Raj about the insane cost of international schools in Thailand.

Ed 00:00:11 So if you've ever wondered if those expensive tuition fees would be better used elsewhere, you'll love this episode of the Bangkok Podcast.

Greg 00:00:34 And welcome to the Bangkok Podcast. My name is Greg Jorgensen, the Canadian who came to Thailand in 2001 after The beach with DiCaprio and decided that I too wanted to meet screaming mad lunatics on Carlson Road who ranted about magical places. Check Mark for that.

Ed 00:00:48 Good plan. Yeah. And I met Knuth, an American who came to Thailand on a one year teaching contract 24 years ago, fell in love with the on the nose nature of Thai Time marketing. If a new condo is cool and trendy, they'll just call it the cool and trendy building. So I never left.

Greg 00:01:06 They don't mess around, right? Why bother with all this flowery, cryptic, superlative writing when they can just call it what it is?

Ed 00:01:12 Yeah, just call it like hip place.

Greg 00:01:14 Call it hip rectangle, tall building.

Ed 00:01:19 We want to give it big thanks to all of our patrons who support the show. Patrons get every episode a day early. Behind the scenes photos of our interviews, a heads up to send questions to upcoming guests and access to our discord server to chat with me, Greg, and other listeners around the world. But best of all, patrons also get an unscripted, uncensored bonus episode every week where we riff on current events and Bangkok topics on this week's bonus show. We did another episode of Greg and Ed discussing their failing bodies with a quick story about Greg's experience getting his back sorted out at mighty Wade hospital. A discussion about the apparently impending relaxation of Thailand's strict rules around alcohol consumption on Buddhist holidays, and complaints from both of us about our shared new hobby trying and failing to grow plants on our balconies. Fail to learn how to become a patron and get all this good stuff, plus full access to over 700 bonus and regular back episodes. Click the support button at the top of our website.

Greg 00:02:24 R.I.P plants on the balcony.

Ed 00:02:27 All right plants.

Greg 00:02:28 You tried, you tried. Also, don't forget if you listen to us on Spotify, you can now hear all of our bonus shows there as well. If you're a patron, simply link your Patreon account to your Spotify account. Add the new feed titled Bangkok Podcast Badass Patrons, only to hear the regular and bonus shows in the same place. All right, well, in this episode we are going to welcome back our good friend Stu Jay Raj. Now, Stu has been a guest many times before, usually delving into the mysteries of the Thai language, but this show is a little bit different. Obviously, Stu is very knowledgeable about education and he's a parent, like many of our listeners are, and he was starting to think about how much he was paying for his daughter's education. As many know, tuition fees at international schools in Thailand can range from very expensive to outright obscene. So Stu created an online tool that calculates not only how much tuition you're paying, but also how much money you could earn.

Greg 00:03:19 If you invested that money instead and gave it to your kid when they became of age. That's a really interesting way to think about the ROI of an education in Thailand. That's return on investment for those that don't know. And not to mention a helpful kick in the brain to start thinking about these things from multiple angles, especially if you want to settle down and raise a family here. So here is me, Ed and Stu chatting about international school education tuition fees in Thailand. All right. We are happy to be back with our good old buddy, our good old friend, Mr. Stu J. Raj, I'm here recording online, also joined by editor. Gentlemen. Say hello. Stu. You first hear the guest.

Stu Jay 00:04:04 Hello.

Greg 00:04:06 And now, Ed.

Ed 00:04:07 I am here. I want to thank you for coming on. listeners, you probably know Stu as, our resident linguist, but, he's actually far more than that. he he's really an expert on education in general and just how the mind works.

Ed 00:04:22 And he recently posted a video that has caused a little bit of a stir in, in social media circles.

Greg 00:04:29 Yes. Do you have a really good knack for coming out with very topical hot button issues, just as the button is waiting to be pushed? So well done. Tell us a little bit about this new one you just posted, today or yesterday, I think.

Stu Jay 00:04:40 So this comes down to our own life. So my wife and I are in a dilemma in that my daughter, who is five years old, we have to make a call. Do we shift schools after next month? As she goes into year one from the school that she's in, because her school currently only goes up to year one, so she could potentially do another year there. And it's an awesome school. We love it. Except she's living in a beautiful bubble that lets her be herself. She's learning amazing stuff, but she hasn't hit the real world. And so we're deciding. Do we shift her into another international school? Do we keep her there for another year? But the sad part, and people might be thinking, well, just keep her there.

Stu Jay 00:05:26 She's lost a ton of friends, and almost all of her friends will be leaving that school with only a handful left. And usually it's only a few of the problem boys. I don't know if I'm allowed to say that, but it turns out that many of the females in her class will go on to other places, and they can get into these other international schools, but the more problematic guys might stay behind. So that's one thing. But the other reason why many of her friends are leaving is that the international school system in Thailand, if you want to get in one of these international schools that are sort of the higher tier, that are the networking, the who's who goes to those schools. If you don't have a foreign parent or say, both parents have dual citizenship or both have Thai citizenship, they don't qualify as a foreign or international parent. And so you go to the bottom of the line and you have to go into the Thai quota. And so because my daughter's friends, many of them might have a Thai parent or two Thai parents in there, they can't get into any international school, so they have to one pay special donations, pay special money.

Stu Jay 00:06:47 We know some schools where they've paid 3 million baht just to get their kid a placement on top of all of the other registration costs. It's crazy. And so, yeah, we've been discussing this. We've looked at some schools and we've decided to keep our daughter here. But it's caused a bigger question. I'm thinking, oh my goodness. You know, looking at the money that we've just dumped into her education, now what we will be putting into her education. What could we have done with that money? And you know, as people know, I've been building out all of these educational tools and things and I've run my stuff. And so my daughter with me is learning her math. She's learning science, she's learning coding, she's learning language. She knows about 60 Chinese characters, and she can read and write Thai. She can even read liner script from Shanghai as a five year old. And so she's doing all this stuff with me and I'm thinking, so what are we paying the this school for? And Greg.

Ed 00:07:50 Greg, you've previously talked about how difficult it is to be just a parent in Bangkok and try to get your kid a good international level education, like meeting some kind of international standard, but without bankrupting yourself. So this is the problem. This is the problem to get, you know, Thai public schools. I have probably some strengths in some ways, but I feel like most, most kind of, families with, you know, mixed, you know, between expats, whatever they want, they want their kid, for obvious reasons, to have an international level education. But that can be hard to get at a fair price.

Greg 00:08:29 Yeah. And one of the big takeaways that I got from this video, Stu, and I think it's like you already mentioned that the bilingual Thai parents versus foreign parents thing. But the other half of this video, I think is just how shockingly, absurdly Expensive international schools are the, quote unquote, good international schools are in Bangkok. And the situation that you posited in the video was exactly mine.

Greg 00:08:54 You come over here as a 20 something with, you know, you're young, dumb, looking for fun, and you don't care about this. Oh, I lost money. I got a new job. I don't have any money this month. Whatever. It's not a big deal. But once you maybe meet someone, settle down and have a family, now you're starting to look at putting your kid into an international school. And some of these schools, the tuition can be upwards of, you know, 600, 800, a million baht a year for a primary school kid. And it just goes up from there. And that's not including the plus this, plus that, plus that. So it's it's I got a lot of thoughts on this from several different angles. And it can really, really affect the quality of life, but also whether your life here should or even can continue. I've known lots of friends. I think we all have lots of friends who have had kids and then gone back home because they just cannot afford to be here, right?

Ed 00:09:50 Because back home, typically, I mean, for me it would be in the States back home.

Ed 00:09:53 It's like the public schools are pretty damn good. You know, my I have four sisters and a couple of them have kids and they they have means, you know, my my, my, my sisters and their husbands are quite successful and they can pay for I don't want to say any school, but they, you know, they have means, but they almost all if I think about it, they sent their kids to American public schools in their neighborhood because they're incredibly cheap and they're super solid with excellent sports. And so this is, this is, this is this is what Thailand lacks. It lacks very good public schools that you can just dump your kids in for a reasonable amount. Yeah.

Stu Jay 00:10:34 So I have a few thoughts on this. First of all I'm from Australia. You can tell from my accent. And so when I was a kid, I went to Catholic schools. So I guess like in the private sort of realm. And my high school was actually, you know, it was great.

Stu Jay 00:10:51 Look like Harry Potter school. It was all sandstone. It was an excellent monastery. they had secret tunnels and things in there from this monastery out in the bush. It was pretty amazing. yeah. Like abandoned buildings, bell towers. It had the the lot there. It was fantastic. And at that time it only went up to a year. Ten. So for my final years, year 11 and 12, I went to a public school there. But honestly, that public school I think was better than the private Catholic school. So for me that was there, but the fees weren't anything really that expensive and didn't break the bank. And it was fantastic. Fast forward. So I moved to Thailand and, you know, you I came here quite young. And so it was a 20 early 20 year old. You're there. And then into a marriage then. And so I had I have now a 21 year old daughter and a 20 year old son. So when they were kids in a previous marriage, it was this situation.

Stu Jay 00:11:53 So I had them go to a bilingual school. But this was the the rub for me. The English that they learned there was terrible. Oh, and it was English. They had Filipino teachers. I'm sorry to anyone out there, but and they weren't correcting the English. And so my kids were speaking English, if that they couldn't, could barely say hello. And Thai was the base language. Everyone there spoke in Thai together, and so they're pretty much non-existent. So when they were six and seven, I moved them to Australia. They had intensive ESL and in the space of months they were speaking English. And now if you listen to them, they're native English speakers. You know, sometimes you can see that there's like that base that was missing there. From what you get when you're like in your first six years of life. Yeah. So they went to Australia and they went into a public school there, except it was called an experiment school or something. It was basically a special school that was almost like a private school.

Stu Jay 00:12:56 but it was again, it was public, wasn't expensive at all. And they had a great education. Now, my five year old daughter, I'm in another marriage. We've been together for 15 years now, and our five year old daughter is going to school here. And I thought, no, this time I want her to speak like a native speaker of English. And so she went into the international system here. She's going to a fantastic school. But we're in this position now where we are just, you know, everything we make goes into the school, everything. And it guides what you do, what we do. My wife and I, we're running, you know, several businesses. We're working. you know, we were both at times CEOs of a tech company. and now she's got her businesses and also working full time in a company. I have been working with a company, but I came out, you know, but you makes you think, am I going to stay in that crappy situation just for the sake of paying school fees? Right.

Stu Jay 00:13:55 Sure. And basically, it neuters any ability to think creatively about what you want to do because you think that next term is only like one month away, two months away, and just for this school alone that she's at, you know, you're looking at about 180,000 baht three times a year. And this is the cheap end, right? Right. Yeah.

Greg 00:14:19 I'm holding up. I got a bill for my my son's school the other day. I'm pulling it up here. Don't know if you can see it, but yeah, you get that. That's the bit a bit of sticker shock. Yeah.

Ed 00:14:27 You know, it's funny as a as an outsider since I don't have kids, It just. But I am in the education game, so I teach. You know, obviously at the university level, I really feel for you guys because it's just so obvious that you want what's best for your kid and you want them to get a good education and create all these opportunities. But you don't really know if you're if you're getting what you need from how much you're paying.

Ed 00:14:54 You know, it's like they yeah, when you're a parent, it's like you're kind of over the barrel because you'll you'll kind of pay anything. You'll pay anything for your kid. But it's unclear whether it's really worth paying 200, 300, 400 or 500,000 like a million. You know, like, how do you how do you know you're actually getting something worth that amount? and this and, we haven't actually mentioned yet, but, Steve's recent video and, and the website he put up basically kind of let's, let's, you know, how much money you could make if you put the tuition into another investment. You know, so it's like it's really. It's like kind of the opportunity cost of if you spend a lot on the international school, if you didn't do that, what could you make if you invested in something else?

Stu Jay 00:15:43 Right. So as you do, I go to sleep thinking about this sort of stuff and especially, you know, now and we're thinking about it. And so it was racking, you know, I was racking my brain just thinking and looking at these numbers and just then thinking, what if I compounded interest if I took this, if there was another way to educate my daughter and that money.

Stu Jay 00:16:07 Supposing reality is you probably wouldn't take that money and just put it away. But if you did, what could you be making? Your kid probably wouldn't even have to work again. So that's right. And I built a website and I built the tool and I had nowhere else to put it. So I just threw it on my language Tools site at Cracking So you go down there. It's not a language tool, but it's, the school fees. If you go to cracking language school fees and you'll see it then. So I started to collect data. I'm thinking up to over 50 schools now. Greg, we just added another school in we won't say exactly which one. but basically it allows you to. I scoured the internet and I got the minimum and maximum school fees, and then I made some assumptions. So assuming the minimum is a preschool, maximum is year 12. And then I just broke it down over all of the years of school. And then you can choose how from what year to what year your child would be learning at X school, how many acres they're going to do extracurricular activities.

Stu Jay 00:17:21 So I set a price of 5000 baht per acre. But actually my daughter's school is 7500. I've run acres at something like Verso International School, and I was charging 30,000 baht per head per term for ACA. So, you know, they can go right up and also meals and transport. So some of them have fixed costs. And and so I chose a slightly conservative number as a fixed cost if you want to add those in. And I put what the educational cost was there. But then and I also you're allowed to put an inflation number in there because of course inflation is going to add to the cost over the years. And so I think I set it at something like 2% or 2.5 or 2.3%. And then the fun thing, just as a mind experiment is what if I found an investment? So I set 7%. But you can put whatever percentage you want if that were compounded, right. How much money would you make? And supposing you didn't give it to them when they graduated high school, but you kept it on through the university years, and then you gave it to them, say 27 and it turns out that for many of these schools that say you, you set up a fund and you did this for your kid and you gave it to them when they were 27.

Stu Jay 00:18:39 Most of these schools here in Thailand, you would end up giving your kid around 1.5 to 2 million USD. Wow.

Greg 00:18:47 Yeah. That's crazy. Let me ask you. And you guys, Ed is, as someone who sees this, the results of this firsthand. And Stu, as someone who's done a lot of research into this, our international schools in Thailand, a scam.

Ed 00:19:01 Well, it's funny, I wish, actually, Stu was somewhat motivated me to try to figure this out. So when students apply to my university, obviously I can see what high school they went to. And then I just actually did admission interviews last week, you know, interviewed high school students applying to my program. And I'll ask them about their school and their program. But after that it's not really tracked. So. So it's going to be in my university system. But now I feel motivated. If I ask my boss, I bet I could probably set up a spreadsheet of of how like how the students did do in my program, like what their grades are and then track it back to their school.

Ed 00:19:41 But I don't think my university has ever done that. So I'm kind of curious, like, if it's worth it, you know, if actually the better students in my program went to more expensive schools. Now, I actually don't know the answer. I don't know, I don't know.

Stu Jay 00:19:54 So I can tell you from my experience as the CEO of a tech company, a global tech company, in hiring people, but also and my wife, but also my wife, she just this past week, she was one of the judges for one of these, things where all of the international schools come and pitch business ideas.

Greg 00:20:17 Okay, cool.

Stu Jay 00:20:18 And we also, when running the business, take in trainees. We take in these internship of kids that have come and there are certain schools there that both my wife and I, we will not accept them as interns. Oh, really? And you just know. And we thought, oh, give him another chance from certain schools. And the same things happened that was like a consistent type of behavior.

Stu Jay 00:20:46 Interesting didn't work and they lacked certain fundamental skills. On the flip side. My wife came back, this past week, and, you know, she was a judge over the weekend of one of these competitions, and there were certain schools there, and they just blew them all away. Funnily enough, the school schools that we didn't take interns from, they bombed dismally in this competition as well. So and they're not a cheap school.

Ed 00:21:18 Cool.

Stu Jay 00:21:18 Right? But it seems so. I think it's hit and miss with some of them. another thing that I think is important for me, one, as somebody who's a language geek, and I see language is a very important thing, but also as an Australian, the way that you speak English for me is an important thing if you're going to be going back and living in Australia. Australia can be a brutal place and my children, when they move to Australia, received, quite a bit of racist, treatment. My daughter, my older elder daughter, she's 21, she looks more Asian and she had people telling her, go back to where you came from and all of this.

Stu Jay 00:22:03 And so anything you can do living in Australia to minimise and mitigate that kind of behaviour is good. Some people mentioned in the comments of my YouTube clip that it's elitism and accent is nothing, and it should just be about communication and getting the bare minimum. So it doesn't matter how you speak English, maybe, but for me it's an important thing. And so one thing I've noticed, there are certain schools and there's almost a line that can be drawn. if you look at the list of schools that I've got out there where you can start hearing English.

Ed 00:22:34 Well, I can test with our incoming students that there is a radical difference in their English abilities. and so we, you know, we, we try to create opportunities for our students. They're going to be in our program for four years. And the hope is, you know, because our our program is obviously 100% in English, everything we do, our hope is that after four years, their English will be where it needs to be. But incoming.

Ed 00:22:59 There is really a radical difference. I mean, so obviously we have a minimum level of English. If we don't think they can survive in the program, then they don't get in. But, some schools are doing a much better job when it comes to English than others for sure.

Stu Jay 00:23:14 Yeah. And so I've been to some of the schools when we were looking originally for my daughter, and I would just sit and listen in the playground. And one of the schools, we actually asked because we went to one of their open days, but none of the students are really there. So we asked to go there, and we went there just before playtime and listened to it. And you can hear it on the accent. And many of the Thais will speak English together or speak sorry tie together. And so then they speak this sort of English. English. The English is good, but it's not native. And the Japanese there's it's a weird thing that the Japanese, even if they have English only policies, usually the Japanese will all speak Japanese together and they just say, yeah, they'll go with it.

Greg 00:23:56 So he's got a rule at his school, no English or no Thai allowed. And if they get penalized, if they're talking Thai.

Ed 00:24:02 Oh, wow. Now, do you think they stick to that? Right.

Greg 00:24:04 Most of the time, if obviously there's no teachers around, I'm sure some of the Thai students do. But yeah, in class that they apparently they're pretty rigid about it.

Ed 00:24:13 It's funny, I suggested in my program that we do that, but it got rejected out of hand because, you know, I teach how to go from a Thai government university, even though it's an international program. And so they said, we can't we can't ban tie in like a tie a tie university. That's hilarious. But you know, this this decision you guys have I really feel I feel your pain because, Stu, you alluded to it at the beginning of the of the episode. You're you're paying for all different kinds of things because there is possibly, maybe a network effect and a status effect. You know, if you, you know, if you pay for some of these super high.

Ed 00:24:48 So I mean, I'll just name I'm just naming these randomly. These are not schools that, that their kids go to. But the schools like, you know, ISB or ASB like these schools that they have a certain status, obviously. I'm sure you're getting a good education there, but I'm sure a lot of it is just I want my kid to have this on their resume.

Greg 00:25:07 Well, that's what I was talking about when I asked about about the scam thing. Like, I think that there's like the, the, the tuition you pay is is outrageous. And I don't know if there's any way to justify that, but there is the attached intangible value of who you graduate with, you know, like the next prime minister or the next chairman of the Bank of Thailand or something like that, you know, and a lot of a lot of people I know who's who, who, who don't and who do send their kids to these super expensive schools. A lot of them just call them asshole factories because they just churn out really entitled young kids.

Greg 00:25:42 But also, like I said, there's a lot of like these intangible costs associated with it because of course you're going to be friends with the future leaders. It's like sending your kid to Harvard.

Stu Jay 00:25:52 I we were in an interesting position, because when we were running the tech company and my wife before me, the reason why I came in to take over as a CEO of this company, it was a German tech company. And she was, you know, in there a their CEO. And she got tapped to go into this government program as a government military program. And, you know, do you go or do you not? But everybody that we know who's been in it said, look, it's better you're in and out. And it was probably one of the best things that she's done. But this is like the ultimate network for Thailand. Anyone who is anyone is in this military program. It's I guess it's kind of like Skull and Bones or Deep State for Thailand. but in being that, then it's hooked into, say, all of these networks that you would otherwise get through the schools.

Stu Jay 00:26:42 And so many of our weeks and our weekends, we're having dinners with these people and we're eating in the social life over the past several years have then been built around these people. And on top of that, you know, we're kind of hooked in through business and these into the polo scene and the horse scene and the the ice hockey scene, which is, again, all of these people who are going to these schools to from the Thai side, they're still very, very Thai. And so these are, you know, the, the people that we're we're meeting with and you're going out. we also try to keep our own privacy, but through business and having to be in these circles, we're there as well. So if we're getting these outside of the school, for me, having them at the school becomes less important. A lot of the people have the kids go to the school, so they're making these connections and the kids can play together. Our kids are already playing with the kids of these families.

Ed 00:27:36 Interesting. So one of those ties. But but those ties. Who you're meeting in that network. I wonder if they all went to those schools.

Stu Jay 00:27:45 Oh they.

Ed 00:27:45 Do. Are the proper ones like the the super paying, the super expensive ones?

Stu Jay 00:27:49 Yeah they do. The kids all go there or they go to like Thai Thai schools, but the majority of them are going to these. They have their kids going to these schools that are in the list in the calculator that I, I built out. And so there's definitely that thing. And, but there's also a thing is our kids are going there. Of course your kids are going to go there. So there's kind of like a pride thing too. You don't want to say, oh, actually we're homeschooling. It doesn't look good.

Ed 00:28:14 Well, actually, since you brought that up, I was going to ask you about that. I have one friend in Thailand who is, homeschooling his daughters, and I think with him, it's a semi.

Ed 00:28:27 He's a Christian guy, so I think it's in the States. I associate homeschooling with a Christian thing. I know you could really do it for any reason, but someone like you, who you are a professional educator, you're like, I'm sure you could do an incredible job with your daughter homeschooling. And then of course with your calculator, now you're you're looking at you're looking at the investment or what the what the money. You go I mean, are you have you thought about this like, is this on the table as an option?

Stu Jay 00:28:54 100%. So this is the thing. So like I talked about my Minecraft program that I originally ran as an ECA at verso. And so it's basically giving kids fundamental schools in thinking and math, in data structures and, of course, language and all of these things. And so that turned into an adult program. But if you all of these tools that I've built out, I was mainly doing them for my daughter so I can use them with her. So she jumps in and you know that you can practice writing, you can practice reading scripts.

Stu Jay 00:29:23 I can train her about her mouth and I can teach her Chinese characters. I've built an abacus in there so I can teach them math, and how to think of numbers as something that are tangible. And it's working on her. And so I've put this kids program together, and hopefully in the next couple of weeks, we're going to there's a, a place here that does drama studies and everything. I live out on my way. And so we're going to start running it as almost an okay, but maybe on weekends or in the holidays and get some more kids in there and see if it works. But I that what I'm building up, as you see in this site, I'd be totally up for finding a way that I could at least build some kind of hybrid system for my daughter. because academically, I believe that I could build a system that would give her everything that she would need. I don't know if emotionally and socially, though, she would be getting everything that she needs.

Greg 00:30:17 That's a big thing.

Greg 00:30:18 That's more of those intangible things that you can't price and you can't predict. Really? Absolutely. Something you mentioned earlier about being locked in and to to a school. And that's the case for more than in more than one way. Now, like I said, what really hit home for me about your video was the fact that if you decide to settle down here and raise kids, like, for me, for instance, like, we're lucky in that we live fairly close to our school. And so every once in a while it'll come up in conversation, oh, why don't you move? Or why don't you get a bigger place or move here? And I was like, well, we can't really because we're kind of locked into the school. So where my where my son is like, unless we want to disrupt it and find a new one and, you know, like we're kind of tied to this geographical area. And I've got a friend who's moving to Thailand with with his wife and three kids.

Greg 00:31:08 And my, my big advice to him is find a school that you like first and then find a place to live. That's close, because I got friends. I think we've all got friends, probably, who spend hours every day in traffic.

Ed 00:31:20 I mean, no, commuting will destroy your life. I agree that that sounds like good advice.

Stu Jay 00:31:24 So that that lock. I entitled the first clip. I did another one today. That was a follow up. but the first clip was called The International School Trap. And the reason why I use the word trap, it has several barbs or several teeth. The first one is that if you go and look at the actual, plan of fees for each of these schools, and I was just entering a particular one in they have a registration fee, an application fee, and this one in particular. And many of them have this. They have an annual contribution that you must make.

Ed 00:32:06 An annual voluntarily contribution that's mandatory.

Stu Jay 00:32:10 250 000 per year. 250 yeah.

Stu Jay 00:32:14 On top of all of these other things, as an annual contribution, on top of all of the school fees, but you can get a portion of it back if you stay at the school. And so you're locked into the school.

Greg 00:32:26 So blackmail.

Ed 00:32:28 Yeah.

Stu Jay 00:32:29 And I'll talk about that in a second. But so you're paying these crazy registration fees. So if you want to go to another school, some of them will say I will waive that. If you're coming from, say, a partner school or something. But basically you're needing to pay all of this money just to apply again and try and get in. And then you've sunk so much money in these fees that you won't get it back. There's this hope that maybe we'll get a portion of it back if you just sort of sit it out and you imagine if you're an expat, the people are going to be here for several years and go, so they never get that money back. Right. It's a scam. And so this and then, you know, I talked about some families where they pay 3 million baht just to get their kids listed in the school.

Stu Jay 00:33:09 For me, ethically, that is appalling. Sure. I really can't ethically swallow that. And so and I'm thinking I'm sending my kid to go and learn to be adults and learn to live in the world with you who are running on a system that I think is ethically appalling. Right. And so that's, for me, just another thing that I want to do it myself. But the other thing that's locking people in is not only do you need a work permit to work here in Thailand, so say, you know, a family, the mother, the father, they come here on a package. Part of that package is that they're paying for the school. So even if they want to leave the company. Say, supposing the company is a horrible company? they can't, because that's the kid's education.

Greg 00:34:01 That was interesting, because when I got about seven years ago now, when my son was still quite young, I was offered a job at an international school that was quite far away from me, and it was a pretty prestigious one.

Greg 00:34:13 And I thought, well, if if I take this job, my kid goes to the school for free. This is one of something that Ed and I have talked about on other shows, like the two sweetest gigs you can get in Thailand is working at an international school where your kids go for free, or knowing someone at the US embassy. So all your Amazon deliveries are delivered without postage. So it's like those are the two best things we do. But but I thought, like, if I take this job at this school, I'm kind of I'm locked in there because if my son goes there and say the job goes well for two years, what happens if they downsize? Sorry, we don't need you anymore. What happens if I hate it? Then I'm stuck at this shitty job that I hate just so my kid can get it. Get a get an education. What if I get fired? Then I've got to do. I want to keep him at the school. Do I want to? What if I get a job on the other side of the city? You know, it's like this.

Greg 00:35:02 This? What do they call it? The Faustian bargain. Is that what they call it? Is that.

Ed 00:35:05 Yes.

Stu Jay 00:35:06 Yes. And I, I was in a situation like this just a couple of months ago, and I was doing a project with a company that may have been looking at taking me on permanently and oh my God. And, you know, it was decent money and it could have covered a lot of things and done a lot of things. But ethically, I couldn't swallow a lot of these things that they were doing. It was just horrible. And it got to the point where I just felt like I was going to war into a war zone every morning, going in there to the office to, to do what I needed to do there, to the point I just this isn't working. And, you know, even though financially it would have put us in a much better position, on top of other stuff, I just. There's no way that I could do that. But a lot of people don't have that ability.

Stu Jay 00:35:59 Or the luxury to be able to walk away. I, you know, I've been here, I've got my tabby and barn and everything, so I can stay here for the rest of my life without having to work or whatever. But a lot of people aren't in that position. They need the work permit, they need the visa, or they need whatever. And so they're locked into their job, and then the school is tied into that as well. So it is seriously a trap.

Ed 00:36:23 Sure, sure. Well, Stu, I think your, your website is, is actually it's the right way to approach it because it's quite rational. You know, any money you spend on school is money you can't spend on something else. And I think maybe a lot of people don't look at it that way. But that's really what you should like. You should look at. This is really an a potential opportunity cost. And that maybe that'll help help people make a smarter decision of whether whether the investment is really worth it or not.

Stu Jay 00:36:51 Yeah. And just just, piggybacking on that, some people say, what, you're not going to give your kids an education. No. The reason I did this is to think, is there some way to to divvy it up or do it in a smarter way? That's one thing. It's not just saying you keep your kids dumb.

Greg 00:37:10 dumb, but rich.

Stu Jay 00:37:13 But the other thing is, imagine what money these schools are making. Where is the money going? Right. If it's insane, if you if you actually do the math and flip it around, if you just take. So what my calculator does does it for one person. Okay. Then you calculate how many students are there. You take salaries out and everything, but you can start to get a good picture of what these places are making. And it's actually crazy numbers.

Greg 00:37:41 Yeah. Now let's let's just use my my son's school for an example here. And I'm not going to say the name of the school, but let's just go through the numbers real quickly.

Greg 00:37:47 So I put in his school and from the year he started, which wasn't at kindergarten, but it was a few up from that. So it's got the total education cost for me is just just under 3.5 million bought from from where he began right up to year 12. Now the next box after that says potential investment value and that is 4.3 million. But now that is the money that I could earn if I took that original 3.5 and invested it.

Stu Jay 00:38:17 Yes. So can I just ask, have you ticked by the way I've got include school, transport and meals. So if you if you put that there and if I'm looking for.

Greg 00:38:29 School transport and no meals, I cook the meals at home very proudly. I will say healthy meals every night.

Stu Jay 00:38:34 Okay. And then how many acres on average. And I've got acres at 5000 baths, so they're pretty cheap. Okay. 6000, but.

Greg 00:38:43 Yeah. Okay, I'll say three.

Stu Jay 00:38:45 My daughter does three, but I've got two as the default there.

Stu Jay 00:38:48 Okay. Let's see.

Greg 00:38:50 Well, no, let's say two. I'm going to bring it back down to two. So okay. So that number is.

Stu Jay 00:38:54 So the number that I have is a total of 4.5 million baht or 126,000, dollars. And where it says potential investment value. So that's basically supposing you chose rather than to pay for your child's education, you took it away and it was making we have here 7% right where it says investment rate. Yeah. That would that could grow to 5.67 million baht, which means you would be making a profit of $32,000 or $33,000, for, for that time. Now, I just supposing you could make 10%. Some people say, where are you going to make 10%. Supposing you could. I'm just changing the investment rate to that. That's knocked it up to you would be making a profit of 63,000, almost $64,000. But there's a funny one down there, then. Imagine if you kept that money until, say, there were 27. So I've got continue this investment until age and I've put 27 in there.

Greg 00:40:01 27.

Stu Jay 00:40:02 Okay, okay. And you notice and so that means if you look at the long term investment projection, you would have almost $400,000 to give your son at age seven to go and start a business.

Greg 00:40:16 Almost 14 million.

Ed 00:40:17 But let me let me ask you guys this. obviously you have to give your kids some education. So presumably you're comparing it to what if you just let your kid go to a Thai school? 100% Thai public schools. So that must be very cheap. Is that correct? I don't know anything. Like if you if your kid goes to like a straight Thai public school, is it, is it is it pretty cheap?

Stu Jay 00:40:38 It will be much, much, much cheaper. I can tell you that my kids, because it's so far into the future, I don't mind telling you now. The very last school in the list that right now, I might add some later. You've got blank Brexit bilingual school. That was the school that my kids went to before they moved to Australia like almost 20 years ago.

Stu Jay 00:40:58 but you can see there just that was about 30,000 a term, three terms. So that's 82,000 about a year. that's I guess, on the sort of high end of Thai schools, but you're probably looking at 30 to 50,000 for a decent high school, middle of the road high school. Right. so, you know, that's.

Ed 00:41:19 Kind of the minimum that's the baseline that you're going to have to pay unless unless you did something like home schooling.

Stu Jay 00:41:24 Yeah. You wouldn't want to go lower than that. So you're looking at 80,000 baht a year. but if you're looking at the say around the where my most people are wanting to go to, what is it? Bangkok Prep or Bangkok? Patna. From my, daughter's school. So if I have a look at, Bangkok, Patna school instantly goes up. You're looking at, you know, it's going up to a million baht a term by year 12. Around 700,000.

Greg 00:41:58 And outrageous.

Stu Jay 00:41:59 Yeah. It's crazy. And so you're looking at, you know, let me switch that back to if they were doing that from preschool.

Stu Jay 00:42:07 So I'll turn that from preschool. One you're looking I've got right now at Bangkok Patna School, based on the figures that I have here, from preschool through to year 12, it would be a total investment of around 403,000 USD.

Ed 00:42:23 Oh my gosh.

Stu Jay 00:42:25 And supposing you could grow that at 10%, 10% a bit higher, but let's just say 10% just for fun. and you kept it until they were 27, just rolling over and making that year on year you'd be giving them $1.3 million at the age of 87.

Greg 00:42:41 Yeah. At that, at that price point, you don't need an education. Do you?

Ed 00:42:44 Yeah, right.

Stu Jay 00:42:46 If I'm if I'm teaching my daughter, you know, she's learning how to code and she's learning this and that, you teach them to run a business. And there are some awesome schools. They verso. You know, this is the verso is an amazing school that gives them real, practical, fundamental technical skills, how to live in life and run business and all of this.

Stu Jay 00:43:04 So you teach them how to run a business or do something like that. Imagine what they could do with $1.5 million, even if they used a fraction of that and they lived off some and went and invested it. So, you know, it's I think it's a valid argument. Whether you have the, can I say the balls to actually put that much money away and just keep it and not use it and keep rolling it over for them? That's another question.

Greg 00:43:27 Right? Well, that's a good that's a good place to end this on because like, like you said, the the option of just keeping your kids at home and saying play video games all day while I invest your money is not really, really. That's right. But this is an interesting thought experiment to sort of play with a little bit of money and then sort of make you think about what is your money really buying you, because this whole conversation can be wrapped up in a little package saying that international schools in Thailand can really mess things up if you don't plan correctly, financially, logistically, you know, in other ways too.

Greg 00:44:03 So it's a real this, this tool is a really interesting way to sort of kick your brain into thinking about these kind of things. And for me, I think my big takeaway for education is that I'm like, I'm not sending my son to the most expensive school because I can't. But this school he's going to is okay. But then the question becomes, me is a father and his mom as role models, as as guidance for his for the rest of his life? Like what? How? How can we help elevate the overall experience? And I mean, that's the unanswerable question, But that's also our job.

Stu Jay 00:44:35 Sure. I hear what you're doing, Greg, and it sounds like you're doing an awesome job with your son, especially with all of the, the cultural education that you're giving him from the West. It sounds like he's fitting into both Thai and Palang culture very well.

Greg 00:44:50 So. Well. Thank you. It's funny, I was just talking about this today. I think I'm falling a little bit behind because we don't really celebrate Christmas in a big way.

Greg 00:44:56 And he doesn't really know much about Halloween. So I think I gotta up my foreign game a little bit.

Ed 00:45:01 Well, he knows GTA really well though.

Greg 00:45:04 Yeah, he's he's up on the video game, so I guess it's something. Well that's really interesting Stu, thanks so much for coming on and chatting about this and everyone. this is this is a great website to check out its cracking language, dot com slash school fees and of course cracking language. Com has all of Stu's other awesome tools for learning Thai and Chinese and a million other languages and and things that you're into because you're way smarter than we are. But it's a great site to check out, and this is a cool tool if you're thinking about being in Thailand with a family for any length of time, definitely check it out for sure. Any anywhere else we can look at you, look at you, look you up to you and find out more information on this.

Stu Jay 00:45:43 So they're the main ones cracking language and of course Jay Academy Jay de mi.com.

Stu Jay 00:45:48 But they're all going to be ported over there. But honestly I think I'm heading in the direction where I want to put my my tech ability and my educational ability together to build some kind of hybrid system to at least give some options, even if it doesn't mean that I'm totally taking my daughter out of the school system, slowly wean onto it. So if anyone else is up to it, or think that you know is something you want, maybe I'll even put more seriousness into that thought. But this tool that I built was definitely food for thought, and it's got me thinking of different permutations and possibilities. I think the way that international school is now an education is now it's almost I would say it's rancid here. It needs to change. I is changing that. Education is changing. So why not use this as an opportunity to sort of even accelerate that change?

Greg 00:46:44 I gotta say, I'm pretty sure sending my kid up to the end of the soy to start working at 711, because I gotta say, my real world education didn't really begin until I started working in retail, so I think that's a good question.

Stu Jay 00:46:54 Don't knock 711. They learn inventory, they learn marketing, they learn everything.

Greg 00:47:01 Totally. I'm 100% serious. Once you start working in retail and dealing with people and dealing with the how and why of a business man, that's a that's a that's an exponential learning curve that you can't get in school.

Stu Jay 00:47:11 I would hire a 7-Eleven employee any day of the week. They have so many different skill sets there that you need in business. And, you know, these kids, I don't know what they're paying them, but I think that's a phenomenal school for them to be at.

Greg 00:47:25 Sure. Well, I will say that if I counted change back as slowly as they did at 711 after my first month at my retail job, I would have been kicked to the curb pretty quickly. But that's a conversation for another thing. Stu, thanks so much for coming on, man. Always great to chat and we hope to have you back another time soon.

Speaker 5 00:47:40 Thanks, guys. Thanks to.

Ed 00:47:51 Matt I really enjoyed that conversation.

Ed 00:47:52 But as I said in the interview, I don't envy you guys. this is just a very difficult decision. And of course, you don't know how it's going to turn out for, you know, a decade or 15 years from now.

Greg 00:48:05 Right. Yeah. You're like, if your kid grows up to be president, you're like, all right, that's a good ROI.

Ed 00:48:09 Apparently, I made the right call.

Greg 00:48:10 Yeah, but if your kid, you know, skids out and becomes a drug dealer, you're like, ooh, I could have put that money to better use elsewhere.

Ed 00:48:15 Shouldn't have gone to that international school.

Greg 00:48:18 Yeah, it's a total crapshoot. And there's so many like like you said in the interview, there's so many intangible things too, right? Like, who is your kid going to go to school with what other networking? Sure. Exactly what other benefits are they going to get out of it? Like are they going to get out like the social aspect? Are they going to get the the extracurricular activities like sometimes travel or are they going to pick up new hobbies, all this stuff? It's just a big mix.

Ed 00:48:39 Yeah. And then there's the I twist. You know, I've been getting more and more into as I've talked about, I'm using it a lot now to help me prepare my lectures. And I'm definitely going to become obsolete. I mean, I'm, I mean, the technology is already there. My students could I mean, I'm being perfectly honest. If a student of mine who is good with AI, they could definitely learn more from AI than from me in any given hour, because it's because in a lecture they can ask questions, but they don't. They don't get one person doesn't get to dominate my time. Whereas like when I'm interacting with ChatGPT or Gemini, I'm asking you detailed questions exactly about what I don't understand. It's just it's just a great it's just a great tutor and a great teacher. And so that that also was a factor. Like you want to you want to pick a school that is I aware and is going to teach your kid about this. but also you want one that's not going to like not going to cripple them.

Ed 00:49:37 Like AA shouldn't become some kind of crutch. And then also also there's the twist of with I, it's probably a lot easier these days to homeschool your kid. Yeah. I mean, I mean, I mean, a lot of people choose homeschooling already, even in the analog days, like with AI, it's like homeschooling would be much easier. And and this website is calculator. It shows how much money you could actually save in some cases. You know, if you chose homeschooling, obviously there'd be some expenses associated with that. And you invested the money instead over, you know, from from first grade to 12th grade. And then he, he extends it to maybe when they turn turned 27, I think was the age he picked. A lot of times it could be a million and a half dollars.

Greg 00:50:26 Yeah. So imagine getting.

Ed 00:50:27 A compounded.

Greg 00:50:27 5 million bucks when your turn before you're 30.

Ed 00:50:30 Old. So, you know, the moral of the story is, you know, homeschool your kid, invest the money you would spend in an international school and then give them a million bucks later.

Greg 00:50:39 Yeah. And of course, we're being a little bit flippant. It's not that easy. Like, oh, I'll just not work and stay home and teach my kid. Yeah, but yeah, it's easy. But like I said, it's an interesting way to think of these things because as we also talked about, like once you become a parent, like back home, school is a major component of of your, your, you know, your balance, your life, your family life. But it's not the major component, which I think it kind of is in Thailand because it affects where you live. It affects how much you work. It affects the quality of education. Like, sure, there's a lot of knock on effects there. So it can really, really play a big role in, you know, the quality and the length of your expat life in Thailand. So interesting discussion and it's such a Stu thing. To sort of think about this thing and be like, you know what I'm going to do? I'm going to invent an internet scraping machine and put it up on a website that will automatically display the compound interest over six years.

Greg 00:51:32 You know, he's such a smart guy, and it's a really fun thing to play with.

Ed 00:51:35 Yeah, listeners, you got it. You got to check it out. We'll include the link for you. But basically he's got school fees for more than 30 schools or. Yeah, there's a ton of schools up there. And so all all of from, from the most expensive to some of the least expensive international schools, you can see all the costs, like not not just the tuition fees, but all the hidden costs and extracurricular activity fees and and food, the cost of food. And, it's a it's a cool calculator. And, I mean, even if you don't have kids, it does actually teach you something about what it's like to raise a family here. It it's not cheap. Yeah.

Greg 00:52:12 Man. I still remember Mr. Virginia's class back in whatever grade it was. I remember learning about compound interest. I'm like, whoa whoa whoa whoa whoa whoa. These numbers start to go up pretty fast still.

Greg 00:52:21 That's right. I'm not going to take your advice and save money. I'm going to spend it all at the arcade and see how that works. That's right. Sorry, sorry, Mr. pachinko, I should have listened to you. All right. Thanks again, Steve, for coming on the show. Always great to chat, for sure. All right, let's get into some love. Loathe to live with where one of us picks a particular aspect of living in Bangkok. Which we discuss to decide if it's something we love about living here, loathe about living here, or have come to accept as something that we just have to learn to live with no matter how we feel about it. And this weekend, I got an interesting one for you. now, I talked recently about, my recent trip to Shanghai, about how all the motorcycles there were electric. And you recently talked on a bonus show, I think, last week about how you like the sound of the motorcycles in the morning in Bangkok, which signifies the city waking up and being buzzing and interesting.

Ed 00:53:11 That's right. Like, thank God they're not buzzing down my sides or too loud. Well, some of those bikes are too loud. But in general, I do like the the like the whipping, zipping the zipping past and forth. That's a that's a good morning sound in Bangkok.

Greg 00:53:26 Well, that's what I want to ask you. What's your take on those electric motorcycles? Because we're nowhere near where Shanghai is. Because in Shanghai, all the motorcycles are electric. But if you're walking down the sidewalk and a motorcycle happens to be electric, and it happens to fly by you and just goes, phew, and, you know, just misses you and scares the crap out of you. Do you, do you go, oh, wow, cool. An electric motorbike that's very renewable energy wise of them. Or do you go get that stupid ass motorcycle? Almost killed me. I didn't even hear it coming.

Ed 00:53:56 Hahaha. that's a good question. in general, I'm all for renewables. I know it's a complicated equation because the electricity they use has to be generated somehow, so I understand it's complicated, but yeah, I think I like renewables, I think electric cars, electric scooters are a good thing.

Ed 00:54:17 Moving away from gas engines is good. So I think in the end I would, I would probably give it a thumbs up, I would say. I at least live with maybe even love. But, I mean, the bottom line is you the sound of it, at least some combustion engines, is super cool. You know, I've got a bunch of YouTube, you know, black holes. And I'd like to watch, essentially these drag races between, you know, different supercars. Okay. Yeah. And and they always have it well miked, you know, so you can hear, like, the gurgling engine and the exhaust, like the sound of some of those engines is amazing. And then they put it next to a Tesla. And the Tesla is like.

Greg 00:54:58 whoosh whoosh

Ed 00:55:00 Yeah. You know. Yeah. So you you cannot beat the sound, you know of a Harley-Davidson or some combustion engines. Right. But the bottom line is the bottom line is obviously the environment is more important than the cool sound, you know, so I would probably give it a thumbs up.

Ed 00:55:14 But yeah, a a real motorcycle sounds a lot better than, a than a than an electric one.

Greg 00:55:20 There's a whole industry around like, you know, some high end cars that are very well insulated. They actually pipe engine sounds through the speakers of the car, through the audio system, so you get some audible audible feedback from the engine.

Ed 00:55:33 It's such a cool sound. I mean, I wonder what what future generations will think about that. Maybe we think it's a cool sound just because of how we grew up. And, you know, I grew up in the age of muscle cars and, and my buddies, my buddies who lived three houses down for me, his older brother was always working on cars. And we would, like, help him out and hand him screwdrivers and stuff and cool. And then and then he'd, you know, he'd start the engine up and, you know, this is when I was seven, eight years old. and so I've always loved that sound. I mean, like most, like most boys, I think.

Greg 00:56:07 Yeah, I'm a total nerd. I have no like I was not part of the cool shop kids who were not cool anyway, but I have no skills with that kind of thing. But I do love me. A beautiful looking car and a nice sounding engine. Something, primal in there.

Ed 00:56:21 Now, I know some I know some electric vehicles do have fake engine sounds and, you know, whatever. If it if it actually sounds good, I don't mind that it's fake, but I think it's probably pretty hard to replicate the, the that the a good sound.

Greg 00:56:37 Yeah. I think I'm a, I think I'm a live with on this one. Like I don't particularly like it getting, getting almost smoked by a quiet motorcycle. But I think it's also hate to play or not the game like I, I love the fact that electric motorcycles are around. I think it's I'm all for them. But you know, maybe don't drive like a maniac on the sidewalk. That's the real issue.

Ed 00:56:56 Oh, that.

Ed 00:56:57 Sure. Definitely a loathe on the sidewalk, there's no doubt about that. Yeah, but I'm probably. Yeah, I'm probably I live with I, I agree with you.

Greg 00:57:03 Yeah. Cool. All right. Good one.

Ed 00:57:05 Alrighty. A final thanks to our patrons who support the show. Patrons get a ton of cool perks and the warm, fuzzy feeling knowing that they're helping in a never ending quest for cool content. Find out more by clicking support on our website and connect with us online. Where Bangkok podcasts on social media. Bangkok podcast on the web or simply Bangkok Podcast at gmail.com. We love hearing from our listeners and always reply to our messages.

Greg 00:57:34 You can also listen to each episode on the YouTubes. Send us a voicemail through our website. We'll feature that on the show. Hit me up on blue Sky at Greg. Thanks for listening, everyone. Stay dry and we'll see you back here next week.

Ed 00:57:45 No doubt.