Why is capital optimistic about online education
She Ying
In this year's Spring Festival Gala advertisements, in addition to liquor, the advertisements of online education companies, such as Yuanjiao, Xueersi Online School, Zebra AI Class, and Homework Help, left a deep impression on people.
Everyone knows that the Spring Festival Gala ads are expensive, and online education companies dare to spend a lot of money because they are "not bad." According to statistics, the total financing of online education in 2020 has reached a historical high, with a total financing of more than 53.93 billion yuan, a year-on-year increase of 267.37% , Which is more than the total amount of financing in the four years from 2016 to 2019.
Capital is optimistic about the online education track because it sees that online education is gradually becoming a rigid demand for student families.
Especially affected by the epidemic, online education has ushered in unprecedented development opportunities, not only in fiercely competitive first-tier cities, but the sinking market's awareness and recognition of online education has also increased significantly.
With strong teaching and research capabilities and big data capabilities, online education may indeed become a "science of learning" as they themselves advertise, allowing children to "learn scientifically", and can also shorten the gap between urban and rural education and promote educational equity.
However, the in-depth involvement of capital may also degenerate "the science of learning" into "the science of making money." Under excessive pursuit of profit, the original intention of education is lost.
For this, both companies and regulators need to be vigilant.
Up to now, almost no online education company is making money.
They have invested heavily in marketing, not only because they have capital behind them, but also because they have to show their muscles and draw big pie for capital.
Capital depends on returns. They look at the number of students, online hours, class purchase rate, renewal rate, etc. The larger the scale and the brighter the number, the easier it is to go to an IPO. Both companies and capital can make money.
In this process, there are many quantifiable indicators, but the indicators that are difficult to evaluate, such as the quality of teaching and the long-term impact on students, are often ignored, and these are precisely the essence of education.
In order to tell the capital a good story, some online training institutions sell anxiety and induce parents to place orders with a screen-sweeping method; some institutions do not hesitate to step on the policy red line, hire unqualified teachers, and even package newcomers into famous teachers; The institution violated the policy of not charging more than 60 class hours or 3 months and charged thousands of class hours at once.
In this regard, the supervisory authority should continue to manage, especially focusing on rectifying behaviors such as profiteering, discipline training, erroneous remarks, failure of teacher ethics, and false advertising.
At the same time, to solve education anxiety, we cannot rely solely on corporate self-discipline and parental awareness. We must clarify the chain of cause and effect and the chain of responsibility.
The reason why off-campus training institutions can "impress" the hearts of parents is to a large extent because in-school education and teaching arrangements and management services in some places have not kept up. The school has reduced the burden and taught less, and the entrance examination is still difficult.
From a practical point of view, where school education is tight and well grasped, off-campus training institutions are rarely the first choice of parents.
Therefore, to solve the chaos of online education, it is also necessary to return education to the school and work more from the source of the classroom.
The National Education Work Conference has made it clear that it is necessary to rectify and rectify training institutions outside the school, and effectively solve the problem of insufficient teaching in schools and classrooms.
At the same time, the Ministry of Education and other five ministries and commissions have recently jointly issued the "Opinions on Vigorously Strengthening the Construction and Application of Online Education and Teaching Resources in Primary and Secondary Schools", proposing to strengthen the construction of national, provincial, municipal, county, and school-level platform systems to cover all students. Improve the national network cloud platform for primary and secondary schools and the aerial classroom of China Education Television.
If you have enough food in the school class, you can still eat the online "small stove" opened by the country when you go home. Students and parents will not rush to seek out-of-school training institutions. This will also cool down online education and force off-campus training institutions to return to focusing on products. , Users, service, and quality.