NOVA's non-future

A lot of coverage has been dedicated to NOVA at the Japan Times. For a fluff piece on how faculty and staff plan on coping with the school closings, see this article (Jisu Oh is slammin' like a late night snack).

A friend of mine in Japan, a former student, said this two weeks ago:

"Well, I went to Nova 2 days ago, 17th Oct and at that time all classes were closed. But when I got there, Nova staffs were there and they told me that it could be open in 2 days, so keep coming. Anyway, today it was supposed to be open as they said and I called Nova to make sure that it was open. But it’s kept close and nobody was still sure from when all classes would be open like before. It might be open tomorrow, but who knows it? So we’ve been recommended to call the school whenever we plan to go. It really sucks.

Anyway, since that time, I haven’t seen any of the Nova teachers, so I really don’t know what they are all doing. But I can imagine they are sad, disappointed, worried, disturbed and upset. In fact, they have that serious problem to live here."

I talked to an Australian friend of mine on October 26th and she said the following when I asked her about the closings:

"I am sad to leave.. and particularly with how this all ended.. i didn't even have a chance to say a proper goodbye to many of the students.

Actually, to give you the most updated news.. today they have just closed the doors on Nova. So now, no one can go to work even if they want to. Basically the president of the company has just been fired (no idea why it has taken this long for it to happen) and now Nova is in the hands of the jap govt. It'll probably be closed for the next 10 days. I dont think there's anything we can do but to wait and see..."

So things haven't been going well. Brucie was accepted, deferred, and then told to forget about coming. That sucks but it looks like he avoided a huge pain in the ass by missing all of this. As did I by the way. For those of you who haven't been following this, the METI in Japan accused NOVA of breaking Japanese contract law and ordered them to stop signing up new students. Signing up new students is how NOVA makes almost all of its cash, so in a short amount of time they had serious cash flow problems. They started paying all their employees late, and then recently, not at all. To compound their problems, the former CEO Sahashi Nozomu, just decided to disappear when all these problems surfaced. A week or two ago the senior most executives at NOVA all quit over their inability to even get a hold of the guy. The Japanese government has stepped in and assumed control of NOVA to try and reach a settlement with its former employees. I can't be bothered to look online for breaking news so that's all I've got.