Why does our course cost so much less that other schools?

Acupuncture training should be costly. Or should it?

If you've ever considered becoming an acupuncturist, you may have been put off by the prohibitive fees that local schools charge. You may even have wondered why training should cost so much.

There are a few reasons why local, campus-based schools charge such high fees. The first being the simple issue of overheads: rents or mortgages as well as utilities and furniture can significantly add to a school's expenses. There is also the matter of the time the teachers have to spend teaching and need to be remunerated for.

Another important factor for high education costs is a bit less concrete. Simply put, there is now a widely spread belief that professional training should be not just costly but almost unattainably expensive. The fact that, nowadays, most students come out of school with life-long debts is considered normal. It wasn't always the case.

Has education always cost an arm and a leg?

Not so long ago, the most widely-held perception across all cultures was that education should be free, or at least affordable by everyone. In the last two decades, the increasingly prevailing political ideology purports that:
- if something is not expensive, it's not valuable
- growth and profit should always be the first priority to any business endeavour
- education is a business

Giving something (like money) in exchange for something (like professional training) is a time-proven societal model that benefits everyone involved. However the whole system breaks down when the exchange stops being fair. The present situation is that when most students graduate, they are indebted for life, or with their families close to bankruptcy, or both. Not only is this situation unfair, it also has a terrible effect on society as a whole: higher education is only available to people who are rich enough to afford it (or rich enough that the banks will lend to them). This is both perverse and unconscionable.

The art of being both modern and old fashioned

At Classic Acupuncture Academy, we're a bit old-fashioned. Don't get us wrong: when it comes to using all the modern tools available to ensure quality of education, or making the best use of technologies to reach our students wherever they are, as well as deliver our teaching in an engaging, interactive ways, we stand very much with our times. However from a moral standpoint, we're very much stuck in the old system. We firmly believe that education should be accessible to all, regardless of their economic background. We also believe that there are a lot of things in life that are very valuable and yet cost little to nothing (and that's okay).

Thanks to modern technology, we have created a course that can be accessed by pretty much everyone in the world. Because our classrooms are virtual, we do not suffer from real estate costs. When it comes to hands-on training, which is absolutely essential in acupuncture, we elected to hold yearly seminars, which are organised as close to our students as possible. This choice translates in even further reduced costs for our students: those who do need to travel in order to attend only have to do it once a year. Compare that to local school who offer 'online training' options which either demands monthly trips for the students, or leaves them without qualification at the end of the course.

Committing time and hard work is commitment enough

As teachers, we have walked in students' shoes. We know that a four-year professional course is time-commitment enough for anyone. It doesn't need to be a financial burden as well.

We still have to charge something, obviously, because our teachers have to take valuable time away from their own practice in order to transmit the knowledge and provide the support that students need. We also have to pay for teachers traveling, sometime to the other side of the planet, to hold yearly hands-on seminars.

Low fees as a deliberate, moral choice

It would have been no problem to match the prices of local schools and thereby make a lot of profit. After all, we provide a better course in terms of both content and delivery system; we give more direct supports to our students than traditional schools; we allow new acupuncturists to access the rare, authentic and ancient knowledge of Classical Acupuncture; the practitioners we train get better, deeper, long-lasting results with their patients and they can treat a lot more conditions than TCM-trained acupuncturists. Yet we stand by our low-fees choice, because what matters to us is that Classic Acupuncture be accessible to all, regardless of geography or socioeconomics.

Our objective is to give back its rightful place to Classical Acupuncture. For this, we need to make it accessible to as many people as possible. We couldn't do that honestly if we chose to put an economic block in the way.

On this topic, the Acupuncturist's Oath is very clear: the practitioner must not profit from his art and science. That does not mean that he shouldn't demand payment (he must be able to provide for himself and his own after all) but making a fortune out of it would definitely cross the line.

It's possible to be the best and cheapest –and we're proving it too

So, if you've come across our course and wondered whether maybe our fees were low because the quality of our teaching was too, here's our simple answer: we aim for our course to be not just 'good', we are determined that it should be the best. Our fees will stay low because we believe in transmission of and access to knowledge.

If you'd like to learn more about our course, low fees and payment facilities, visit the Classic Acupuncture Academy website.