X-Culture Academy Participation Fees

X-Culture is not a for-profit business or a company in a traditional sense.

X-Culture is a community of hundreds of professors around the world who work together to provide their students with an opportunity to learn international business through experience.

Every professor who joins the X-Culture community helps us run the project. Some professors help only occasionally; others invest many hours every week.

Although many professors tirelessly donate their time, we still need to hire additional help and pay for various professional services and software. For example, we need to pay for web design, accounting, and legal services, database management, webinar software, office supplies, graduate student help, travel stipends for dour students to attend the X-Culture Global Symposium, and thousands of other things.

We don’t have grants or donors to pay our bills and, thus, must charge a participation fee.

The participation fee for the universities is $250 per semester, regardless of the number of students. Universities can apply for fee waivers, which are generally reserved for participants from developing countries and cannot afford the price, or if the banking regulations in the country make it impossible to make a payment to the U.S.

Most universities pay the participation fee, but some universities in Africa, Asia, Latin America, and even in Europe ask for the waiver. The revenue from the fees paid by the universities allows us to cover our major expenses.

X-Culture Kids and X-Culture Professionals

The situation is more challenging when it comes to the non-university participants, namely: pre-college kids and non-student professionals. The administration cost of managing these types of X-Culture participants is us much higher than that for university students.

First, non-university participants tend to enroll individually. The administration cost per student participating individually is several times higher than that per student participating as part of a larger group.

Second, university students are usually supervised by an experienced professor. Many professors have participated in X-Culture many times and require minimum guidance from the program administrators. In contrast, pre-college kids and non-student professionals do not have an experienced professor. This makes our work much more resource-demanding.

Our calculations show that one semester of X-Culture training to an individual pre-college kid or non-student professional costs us approximately $300 per individually-enrolled trainee, and approximately $700 per class of kids enrolled by a school teacher. The cost would have likely been higher if it were not for many university professors and coaches who help us with the X-Culture Kids and the X-Culture Professionals programs for free. If we had to pay for their time, the cost would likely double.

Reduced fees during the 2018-2019 beta testing

The X-Culture programs for pre-college kids and non-student professionals are still in development and beta-testing. We do not feel comfortable charging the full fees until the program is completely developed and properly tested. We have made the decision to heavily subsidize the non-university participants throughout 2018-2019 while the program remains in beta-testing.

During the beta-testing phase, the following pricing will be in effect:

Individual pre-college kid ages 10-17: $75.
School (a group of 3 to 30 students ages 10-17 supervised by a teacher or parent instructor): $250
Individual non-student professional ages 18 and older: $195

Furthermore, we believe everyone should be able to participate in X-Culture regardless of their income level. Therefore, low-income students can apply for the following X-Culture Stipends:

Individual pre-college kid ages 10-17: $75 stipend, covers 100% of the participation fee ($0 paid)
School (a group of 3 to 30 students ages 10-17 supervised by a teacher or parent instructor): $250 stipend, covers 100% of the participation fee ($0 paid)
Individual non-student professional ages 18 and older: $150 stipend, applied towards the $195 participation fee ($45 paid).

Starting in 2020, after the beta-testing is completed and the program is fully developed, the fees will be raised to fully cover our cost.

To learn more about the X-Culture Academy program go to the page for kids/schools or to the page for professionals.