Who is the subject of the business? What are the problems caused by large-scale capital intervention? How to strengthen supervision?
Online education under the capital whirlpool
As the winter vacation is approaching, online education platforms such as Ape Guidance and Homework Help will become active again.
WeChat Moments, Douyin, TV commercials, subway stations, bus stops, building elevator advertisements... wherever the parents of school-age children can see, the basic education online platform advertisements will not be overlooked.
Its financing war has also escalated again.
In late December 2020, Yuandongdao received 300 million US dollars in financing.
Job Gang followed suit and announced the completion of the E+ round of over $1.6 billion in financing.
However, during the New Year's Day this year, the star enterprise Xuebajun in the online education field announced its collapse after 8 years of running due to "not raising a large sum of money" in the past three years.
What impact has the power of capital brought to online education?
For this booming industry, does the supervision of relevant departments keep up?
How to ensure that online education reflects the party and state education policy?
The relevant person in charge of the Department of Basic Education of the Ministry of Education said that it will further cooperate with relevant departments to continuously improve the supervision system, take more effective measures to solve the concerns of all parties, and promote the development of online training standards.
Online education has become the third largest advertiser on mainstream platforms after e-commerce and games
How dense is the advertising in the online education field?
Some netizens described: "A bus station has four billboards, three of which are for online education. From time to time, buses with online education advertisements pass by this station."
Almost all popular variety shows have online education advertisements.
"Happiness Trio" can see the advertisement of Zebra AI class, "Longing for Life" can see the title of the homework help, "Extreme Challenge" will jump out of the "Famous Teacher Online" in Gaotu Classroom, and "Classic Odes" can see Xueersi Online School.
At the New Year's Eve party at the end of the year, online education platforms are also staged an "advertising war".
The CCTV host has repeatedly broadcast the advertisements of the Zebra AI class under Yuandao Guiding.
Hunan Satellite TV played the commercial song of Job Gang.
Tipaipai is the sole sponsor of the education industry for the B station party.
Not only is it intensive, but the discounts on the courses in the advertisements are also one of the best: "Xueersi Online School, 20 yuan for 13 hours of Chinese, 13 hours of mathematics, plus free teaching supplementary materials" "Homework help live class, 49 yuan 33 lessons, allowing children to easily increase their language distance during winter vacation" "High-Tu Classroom 19 yuan and 20 lessons, get 499 yuan worth of mathematics + physics + Chinese + English 4 subjects Qingbei famous teacher live broadcast"...
According to statistics, in the first nine months of 2020, the total investment in advertising and sales by the three ape tutoring, homework help, and Xueersi online school reached about 5.5 billion yuan, more than twice that of the same period in 2019.
"In order to grab traffic and rapidly expand the user scale, online education has launched a large number of low-cost courses, and has become the third largest advertiser on mainstream platforms after e-commerce and games." said Fang Shusheng, executive deputy director of the Education Supervision Office of the Guangdong Provincial Government.
The epidemic has pressed the "fast forward button" for the online education industry. In 2020, the number of users in my country's online education industry will reach 423 million, and the market size is expected to exceed 500 billion yuan
In recent years, my country's online education industry has developed rapidly.
The data shows that the user scale has increased from 104 million in 2016 to 423 million in 2020, and the market scale has expanded from 221.8 billion in 2016 to an estimated 500 billion yuan in 2020.
Zhang Zhili, a staff member of the Education Supervision Office of the Guangdong Provincial Government, analyzed several major advantages of online education: through artificial intelligence, big data, cloud computing and other technologies, as well as super-large-scale question bank, intelligent lesson preparation, interactive live broadcast, online evaluation, tutor workbench, etc. The integrated application of the system platform makes the digital transformation of the whole chain of teaching, learning, testing, practice and evaluation a reality, reducing the burden of school teaching and parent guidance; breaking through the space constraints, students can attend classes without leaving home, and the learning time is controllable. High-quality educational resources can be universally benefited; thanks to the scale effect of the Internet, the prices of online education courses in similar products are cheaper than offline ones, and the introduction of AI courses and video courses lowers the cost of high-quality course resources.
During the epidemic, because students could not concentrate on the same offline venues to study, online education became an important way to ensure that "classes are not suspended".
At the same time, the epidemic has also pressed the "fast forward button" for the originally rapidly developing online education industry.
"Before they were online and offline training classes, and they had concerns about online training. During the epidemic, the children were always at home, and the parent group often discussed which online class is good, and I also signed up for a trial." Mr. Zhu, a citizen of Beijing, said that the child was concerned about the Internet. The class is still suitable, and there is no need for transportation. "If the quality is guaranteed, I will choose online training in the future."
Fang Shusheng analyzed that during the epidemic, live broadcast technology was widely used and promoted, and public schools and offline institutions went online one after another.
At the same time, the wave of “stop classes without stopping school” has further enhanced the market’s awareness and acceptance of online education, and has helped online education institutions to speed up the pace of expanding their businesses in third- and fourth-tier cities.
Background of a large online education company: Internet people initiated independently, offline training institutions increased online business, Internet giants followed suit
Who are doing online education?
Fang Shusheng introduced that the current background of large-scale online education companies mainly has three aspects: First, the Internet people initiate independently.
2011-2020 is the golden decade of new economic development represented by the mobile Internet. The education field is also an important field of Internet +. Internet companies, especially Internet people engaged in related business sectors, will create online education with the "Internet + education" model. First of all, Homework Help, Yuanjiao, and Netease Youdao all belong to this type of company.
Second, offline training institutions increase online business.
Such as New Oriental and Bright Future are traditional offline off-campus training institutions. With the vigorous development of the online education industry, these institutions have begun to attach importance to and open online businesses.
Third, Internet giants follow suit and invest.
As online education has gradually become a trend and has been recognized by capital, Internet giants such as Tencent have also begun to attach importance to online education, and have launched Tencent Classroom and Penguin Tutoring.
"The founders (including co-founders) of the first type of online education company are mainly Internet products, operations and technical talents. On this basis, they recruit professional managers, financing, finance, human resources and other talents to join the executives. Second and third types of education The company's senior management is basically composed of professional managers." Zhang Zhili said.
According to Zhang Zhili, there are two types of teachers in online education companies: one is the main lecturer, whose sources mainly rely on external recruitment and independent training.
The main lecturer is the key to the teaching system of online education companies, and most of them have professional backgrounds.
The second is tutors, mainly college graduates, who are responsible for urging students to attend classes, tracking the results of students' classes, and tutoring students to complete homework.
"The rise of online education originated from technology, development is based on capital, and teaching relies on educators. Simply put, Internet people are the initiators, capital is the booster, and professional educators are the instructors and practitioners." Zhang Zhili said .
Driven by capital, corporate competition has intensified and industry internal consumption has become serious
A steady stream of hot money is pouring into the online education industry.
In 2020, Job Gang disclosed two rounds of financing totaling US$2.35 billion; Yuandaodao disclosed three financings totaling more than US$3.5 billion.
According to statistics, in 2020, China's basic education online industry has raised more than 50 billion yuan in financing, which is more than the industry's total financing in the previous ten years.
"The education industry itself is a relatively slow-developing industry. The power of capital can promote the rapid iteration of the entire education industry, including online education. The boost of capital can quickly expand the scale of online education and training, but it also pushes the online education industry It faces the dilemma of intensified enterprise competition, high customer acquisition costs, and serious internal consumption in the industry." Fang Shusheng said.
"Currently, off-campus online training institutions generally use financing to conduct capital operations, but they are too profit-seeking. In order to obtain customers, some online training institutions do not use the money to improve the quality of service, but advertise in major media. , Creating an atmosphere where all children need to participate in training, aggravating the anxiety of parents. In order to occupy the leading power of the industry, some online training institutions maliciously lower fees and operate in a way of losing money, squeezing out small and medium-sized institutions and causing unbalanced industry development. It also faces operational risks. Once the financing fails to keep up with the break of the capital chain, the enterprise may quickly close down, causing the masses to fail to return the pre-charged fees. For example, the recent abnormal suspension of "Study Bajun" Winning Education, etc., harms the interests of the masses. "The relevant person in charge of the Department of Basic Education of the Ministry of Education told reporters.
Huang Ronghuai, a professor at Beijing Normal University, director of the National Engineering Laboratory for Intelligent Technology and Application of Internet Education, and Dean of the Smart Learning Research Institute, pointed out that large-scale capital intervention in online education has caused a series of new problems: First, large-scale advance tuition has caused family property safety Hidden dangers; the second is that some online education products and platforms are flooded with a large number of advertisements, and there are also content entrances or links that induce consumption and games; the third is the business strategy of continuous financing and burning money and low-cost customer acquisition, so that the teaching quality of online courses, It is difficult to guarantee the quality of teaching and learning services; fourth, some of the content of "early running learning" and "advanced education" do not conform to the law of children's development; fifth, some online education products have privacy leakage and data security issues.
"Due to the boost of capital, under this completely Internet-based marketing model, online education may deviate from the law of education itself. It is not based on the quality of courses and teaching effects to gain market choice and favor, but is gradually dominated by capital. And influence.” Fang Shusheng pointed out that for online education, online is only a means, and the core is to teach and educate people and enlighten wisdom.
After all, what the online education industry needs to meet is people's demand for high-quality education. Only companies that maximize the success of users can ultimately gain market recognition.
Huang Ronghuai believes that education, market supervision and other departments should strengthen linkages, strengthen guidance and regulation on the healthy development of the online education industry, prevent disorderly capital fighting, and encourage and guide online education to return to education itself.
The relevant person in charge of the Department of Basic Education of the Ministry of Education said that in response to the current prominent issues of false propaganda, high pricing, difficulty in refunding fees, running out of money, and blind expansion, while the education department strengthens supervision, it also requires the coordination of relevant competent departments. Strengthen the control of the capital market, strengthen the guidance of the public opinion atmosphere, and promote the legal and orderly operation of online training institutions.
Online education supervision faces practical problems such as difficulty in checking training content and difficulty in supervision of training pre-charges
Online education is a booming emerging industry, and online education supervision is a new topic.
In May 2019, the Guangdong Provincial Department of Education, together with cybersecurity and informatization, public security, communications management and other departments, took the lead in launching the online education product content review project in the country, and issued the interim management measures. All learning mobile applications for primary and secondary school students across the province were included The scope of review is set, and those that have passed the review will be included in the whitelist, and those that have not passed may not be selected.
In July 2019, the Ministry of Education and relevant departments issued the "Implementation Opinions on Regulating Off-campus Online Training", which put forward clear requirements for the investigation and rectification, filing review, and supervision mechanism of subject-based off-campus online training. The basic management system of training.
In accordance with the requirements of the "Opinions", the Ministry of Education instructs provincial education administrative departments to combine local conditions and focus on the filing and review of training institutions, training content and training personnel.
All provinces are also focusing on key points such as healthy content, appropriate duration, qualified teachers, information security, and business practices, and comprehensively investigate and rectify existing off-campus online training. As of the end of June 2020, the first batch of inspection agencies in 2019 have been rectified. jobs.
However, it is difficult to verify the content of online training outside the school, which is still one of the problems of supervision.
According to the person in charge of the Department of Basic Education of the Ministry of Education, training institutions mainly use self-compiled materials, and many English training institutions use overseas teaching materials. Although local education departments have strengthened the filing and review of training content, it is easy to show that there are two differences between the content of the lecture and the content of the record. The phenomenon of skinning.
If the parents of the student do not report it, it will be difficult for the regulatory authorities to find out.
One-to-one course supervision is more difficult, especially for some English-language online institutions. Foreign teachers are located abroad. There is currently no policy on online international employment supervision, and the education department lacks effective supervision methods.
It is urgent for relevant departments to further improve relevant policies and strengthen the supervision of online training Internet companies.
It is difficult to supervise training advance fees, which is another problem in supervision.
Although the state has made it clear that training institutions for elementary and middle school students shall not charge a one-time fee that spans more than 3 months (charges based on class hours, each subject shall not charge a one-time fee of more than 60 class hours), but driven by economic interests, some institutions still pass Discounts, cash rebates, etc. induce parents to pay fees overdue.
If the masses do not report it, it will be difficult for the education department to discover the illegal charges of training institutions in a timely manner.
"Training institutions are the main market players, and the education administrative department has no right to supervise the use of their funds, and cannot make effective judgments on their operating conditions. After the institutions "run away" or cease operations, it will be too late for relevant departments to intervene." Ministry of Education The person in charge of the Department of Basic Education said.
Strengthen guidance and supervision, and urge off-campus online training institutions to better implement the party and state education policies
Education is a major plan of the country and the party.
How to ensure that the online education provided by off-campus training institutions can also reflect the education policy of the party and the state?
Fang Shusheng believes that education and guidance should be strengthened to help the online education industry be familiar with the party and the country's educational policies and quality education requirements, and to improve the education literacy of the industry, especially the heads of enterprises and middle-level and above managers, so that they can better follow the laws of education; strengthen Industry supervision, intensified efforts in top-level design, process supervision, law enforcement, industry self-discipline, etc., gave more guidance, and urged enterprises to better implement the party and state education policies.
"It is very necessary to establish a sound supervision and supervision mechanism for online education." Huang Ronghuai pointed out that online education is a form of education that involves new technologies such as big data and artificial intelligence. The United States, Japan, the European Union and other countries and regions are all focusing on technology. The application in education has carried out targeted research and formulated relevant laws and regulations.
First, the application of big data, artificial intelligence and other technologies in the education field must be legal and compliant.
Secondly, we must ensure the quality of online education products and services, and must withstand the test of time and education practice.
Educational technology products and services need to implement strict standards, and establish a campus access system to prevent certain applications and courses from misleading young people and eliminate their negative effects.
The third is the standardization of application scenarios. Online education applications must be filed, otherwise bad information in cyberspace can easily cause harm to young people.
Finally, we must pay attention to privacy protection and data security in online education, which is also very important to protect the rights of teachers and students and ensure the healthy development of online education.
The relevant person in charge of the Department of Basic Education of the Ministry of Education said that the education department will continue to strengthen daily supervision, continue to do a good job in the filing and review of online institutions, and pass strict inspections to control the entrance.
Dynamically update the black and white list, establish a monitoring and reporting platform, and widely accept supervision from all parties.
Strictly investigate and punish training institutions' violations of laws and regulations, and expose them through multiple channels, forming a warning and deterrent, and guiding training institutions to regulate their operations.
Online education supervision has a wide range, multiple types, and complex conditions. It includes information technology, off-campus training, ideology, and mental health. It also involves many aspects of business management, education and teaching, and involves many functional departments, which need to be improved. Recognize the arduous nature of governance, strengthen supervision and overall coordination.
"The off-campus online training market is large, with many employees, and a large student population. Any related reforms and policy adjustments may affect all aspects of interest demands and have a relationship with social harmony and stability. The current complexity and complexity of online training governance in some places Insufficient understanding and insufficient attention to arduousness require the local party committees and governments to attach great importance to strengthening top-level design and overall coordination, deploying relevant departments to jointly manage, and steadily advancing governance and reform." said the relevant person in charge of the Department of Basic Education of the Ministry of Education.
(Our reporter Wu Jing Han Yadong)