Savage Growth And Return To The Origin: The Song Of Ice And Fire In Online Education

The rapid development of online education ushers in the supervision of "head bashing".

? ? ? ? On June 1, the State Administration of market supervision held a press conference, saying that, on the basis of the inspection of the two organizations in early May, the market supervision departments have conducted inspections on New Oriental, XRS, elite education, leaders' one-on-one, Wall Street English, dada English, excellence, Weixue, Mingshi, Sylvia, bond, blue sky, etc A total of 13 out of school training institutions of Nath college have carried out key inspections. The inspection found that all the 15 out of school training institutions had false publicity and 13 off campus training institutions had price fraud. The market supervision department imposed a ceiling fine on 15 off campus training institutions, totaling 36.5 million yuan.

Parents' group anxiety adds to the pressure of students to go to school and find a job. K12 and higher education have become the c-spot in the education industry in the past few years. The epidemic has further accelerated the penetration of online education in these two sub areas. In the long run, online education has a huge advantage in learning behavior data compared with traditional offline education. With the progress of technology and the accumulation of data, it is expected to achieve personalized learning with thousands of learners as the center.

Liu Xin, an analyst with Huachuang securities, pointed out that for online education institutions, in the short term, they will pay attention to such indicators as the effect of head brand investment and transformation, product strength, data decision-making ability, etc. In the long run, the ability of the company's supply side will be more important. The "internal strength" of the company's teacher training, refined operation and corporate culture will be the core competitiveness that determines how far it can go.

The proportion of new jobs in online education and training industry is increasing year by year, and the epidemic situation has also contributed to the surge of online education posts. People's vision

New career choices

In June last year, he huangang graduated from the Chinese language major of Wuchang Shouyi University, facing the dilemma of choosing his first job. After thinking twice and considering the major matching and salary, she chose to work as a Chinese tutor in an online education institution in Wuhan.

What's different from the past is that the tutors here are different from the traditional training teachers. Most of the teachers who are responsible for online teaching come from famous universities such as Qingbei, while the tutors have a low threshold and only need to be responsible for the daily learning guidance of students.

Before each class, he Huan needs to communicate with each parent online to understand the basic situation of the students. Due to the popularity of online education after the epidemic, the class size of each tutoring is about 150-200. After the students finish the course on the platform, the background will immediately receive the relevant data, and the tutor will make one-to-one targeted comments according to the learning completion, take the students to review the key points of today's learning, and help the students to make a good personal learning plan.

"Like me, there are many peers who work in the online education industry. When I work, I often meet my classmates who are familiar with me. Although I quit because of the lumbar problems caused by sitting for a long time, this kind of young team and good atmosphere will still support me to stay in this sunrise industry." He Huan said.

Like he Huan, there has been an increase in the number of young people choosing careers related to online education in the past year. Excellent education senior HR told the 21st century economic report that the epidemic has stimulated the demand of online education industry, and the business growth has led to the shortage of excellent teachers, and the entry threshold will be relatively reduced. What's more, some students who want to work as teachers do not pass the examination system, and they also tend to choose the more flexible online education industry.

According to the "2020 online education middle and high end talent employment report" released by Liepin, from January to August 2020, the proportion of new jobs in the overall education and training industry accounted for 19.41%, 3.93 percentage points higher than that in January August 2019. The proportion of new jobs in the whole education and training industry is increasing year by year, and the epidemic situation has helped the surge of online education posts.

It is worth noting that, in addition to the relatively concentrated educational resources in Beijing, the density of online education enterprises is far higher than that of other cities, and the gap between the proportion of new jobs in online education in new first tier cities such as Wuhan, Chengdu, Changsha and the old first tier cities such as Shanghai, Guangzhou and Shenzhen is narrowing.

The wave of online education development

Behind he Huan's career choice is the wave of online education sweeping across the country in recent years.

Wuhan's education resources are in the forefront of the country. It not only has a significant talent advantage, but also has a certain industrial demand base. In this boom, it is favored by many online education enterprises.

As early as 2017, some internet education companies began to take the "sinking route" and gradually seek solutions to reduce human costs outside the cities of Beijing, Shanghai, Guangzhou, Shenzhen, etc.

According to the official website information of Wuhan area of China (Hubei) pilot Free Trade Zone, at first, online education enterprises set operation center, marketing center, backstage service and other non core departments or posts in Wuhan Based on cost factors. However, in the past year or two, more and more online education enterprises are gradually moving core departments such as R & D centers and teacher centers into Wuhan area of China (Hubei) pilot Free Trade Zone, and the company executives and new business sectors are also inclined to Wuhan area of China (Hubei) pilot free trade zone. The second headquarters of some enterprises have developed into the largest base in China.

Among them, Suntech has been stationed in Wuhan area of China (Hubei) pilot free trade zone since June 2017, with an office area of 70000 square meters and more than 4500 employees; In less than two years, ape has more than 2300 employees.

Zhu Yu, CEO of Oriental Youbo, once said publicly: "Wuhan has a large number of college students, and the cost of living is relatively low. The fierce competition for talents is far lower than that in cities like Beijing and Shanghai."

Lu Lu, Chief Strategic Officer of Suntech, said that when choosing the location of the "second headquarters", he had repeatedly compared and selected between Chengdu, Chongqing, Changsha and Wuhan. The policies given by Chongqing and Wuhan are similar, but in the end, Wuhan is decided. First, it is aimed at the incomparable talent reserve, the second is transportation advantages, and the third is that the government of Optical Valley understands industry and enterprise.

On June 29, 2020, the East Lake high tech Zone in Wuhan, China issued a new policy of "Optical Valley Internet + education 10 items", established a total scale of 5 billion yuan of online education service industry development guidance fund, to support Optical Valley "Internet + education" industry to become the second highland after Beijing.

At present, optical valley has gathered more than 110 online education service enterprises, including nearly 30 domestic first-line online education enterprises with more than 20000 employees. This indicates that Wuhan online education service industry has shown a strong development trend, and is expected to become a new 100 billion industry in the high-tech zone in a relatively short time.

In fact, as the business model of online education has gradually become clear in the past two years, it coincides with multiple outlets such as AI, big data and cloud computing, ushering in a new round of rapid growth period. At the same time, Wuhan and other local government departments have issued a series of policies. Under the dual incentive of technology support and policy endorsement, online education industry across the country has developed rapidly.

Epidemic catalysis online education

Behind this great step-by-step development, there is also the catalytic effect of epidemic situation.

During the epidemic period, in order to implement the Ministry of education's "suspension of classes without suspension", schools all over the country used online technology to guarantee teaching. Therefore, under the leadership of Wuhan Education Bureau, millions of primary and secondary school students and tens of thousands of teachers in Wuhan have logged into the "air classroom" of Wuhan education cloud.

Mr. Shi Changhua is an eighth grade teacher in Guanggu branch of Huazhong University of science and technology. During the epidemic period, he was responsible for teaching one unit of grade eight English in "air classroom"“ At that time, we thought of many ways to make online courses more vivid and interesting, from combing the syllabus to making teaching courseware, and then completing video recording Mr. Shi Changhua sighed, "all these efforts are worth it now. After the epidemic, the online class resources in the air classroom have become a good helper for many Wuhan teachers to prepare lessons, and the current use frequency of Wuhan education cloud classroom is still high. "

In fact, the means of live broadcast after the epidemic is more and more frequently applied to offline scenes“ At present, the school will use the online form to carry out mid-term and final commendation meetings, hold diversified learning activities, party live broadcast, etc., and online applications are more frequent than before. " Shi Changhua said. A parent surnamed Yang also said that school teachers sometimes use BiliBili website for Q & a counseling, which has not appeared before.

Wang Jixin, Professor of the school of educational information technology of central China Normal University and executive director of the collaborative innovation center jointly built by the provincial and Ministry of education, pointed out that the epidemic is an important development opportunity and an important test of online education in China. Using various teaching attempts and coping strategies including live broadcast platform, although there are many problems, it is difficult for schools, teachers, parents and students to have a comprehensive and in-depth contact and experience on online education for many years.

In February this year, the notice of the general office of the Municipal People's Government on printing and distributing the implementation plan for Wuhan to create a national "smart education demonstration zone" pointed out that by 2022, Wuhan will establish a network, digital, intelligent, personalized and lifelong education system, and build a new education ecology of humanism, openness, equality and sustainability, Lead and support the development of Wuhan's education modernization, and build a national smart education demonstration area with domestic leading level and national benchmarking and demonstration effect.

Professor Wang Jixin predicted that based on the general trend of policy support and "online education", the future teaching will present a large-scale socialized collaborative form, and the school wall will also be broken, thus forming a new ecology of two-way integration of online education and school education.

"Online education can break through time and space constraints, promote resource sharing, and realize educational equity; Offline education is more conducive to the exchange and interaction between teachers and students, so the integration of online and offline education is the general trend in the future. Both promote each other and develop together. " Tian Bo, an education expert at Central China Normal University, said that whether a new teaching mode is good or bad depends on whether it can solve the pain points in education. As for the effect, it needs to be verified by rigorous educational experiments.

In Tian Bo's opinion, with the relevant government departments gradually improving the regulations and norms of intellectual property protection, content supervision and market access of online education, local schools have gradually begun to explore the integration of excellent online course resources into their daily teaching system, carry out classroom teaching based on online intelligent environment, and achieve higher education, training and output. At the same time, for the last kilometer rural teaching points of compulsory education in China, the "special delivery classroom" is also used to solve the practical problem of opening up the compulsory education curriculum stipulated by the state.

Focus on K12 and higher education

At present, online education in Wuhan is still mainly based on K12 (kindergarten through tweak grade, generally 3-18 years old).

"Under the influence of various factors, such as the competitive pressure of entering a higher school and the off campus counseling becoming an important supplementary means, K12 training has a higher market share, but the competition is also more intense." Tian Bo told the 21st century economic reporter.

The 21st century economic report reporter found that at present, most of the parents of K12 school-age section in Wuhan have applied for extra-curricular counseling classes for their children, most of which are offline teaching. However, after the outbreak, the proportion of online institutions is increasing.

A parent surnamed Yuan said that since the first grade of primary school, they have applied for various extracurricular classes for their children“ At present, children are in the fourth grade of primary school, which is an important turning point. Therefore, we will continue to increase investment in extracurricular counseling in English and mathematics. Children do have pressure, but there is no way, all the parents and children around them are like this. "

During the interview, many parents said that learning through online education platforms such as ape counseling is more convenient and students have a good experience. They will continue to consider applying for online courses for their children in the future. Most parents choose large classes based on the consideration of the cost performance of online courses.

At present, K12 online education mainly includes large class, small class and 1v1. Large class class is favored by institutions because of its high gross profit rate. But at the same time, because of its strong replicability, relatively low entry threshold, increasingly fierce competition, the cost of acquiring customers is also rising sharply, and the large class class will also face the problem of weak growth.

In the field of higher education, in recent years, the "postgraduate entrance examination fever" is becoming more and more intense, and the expansion of postgraduate enrollment has pushed this upsurge to a new high. According to the Statistics Bureau of Wuhan, in 2020, the largest increase in the number of students in Wuhan will be graduate students, with a total of 164800 in 2020, an increase of 10.3% over the previous year. The rapid growth of the proportion of graduate students has become a new direction of online education industry, and online training institutions for postgraduate entrance examination are gradually increasing.

"In the field of higher education, there is not only" academic anxiety ", but also" Internship anxiety ". In the increasingly severe employment situation, having a high-quality internship experience means that you can take the initiative in choosing a job. " As one of the leading educational institutions in the field of Journalism and communication, after establishing the new service line of postgraduate entrance examination, Aichuan has launched the "Internship media" project to help students contact teachers in relevant industries, develop internship training courses and solve their "Internship anxiety"“ At present, there are no other graduate entrance examination guidance institutions to launch internship employment service projects at the same time. Whether the internship business is generally applicable to all postgraduate entrance examination institutions and whether it can become an important step for online higher education enterprises to broaden the industrial chain also depends on the stability of its own platform. " The person in charge pointed out that the current profit model of this emerging market segment is not mature.

But it is undeniable that not only Wuhan, but also the whole country, K12 and higher education training are the two major segments in the online education segmentation structure.

According to the iResearch consulting report, from 2016 to 2019, the online rate of the education industry will increase by 5 percentage points from 8% - 10% to 13% - 15%, with an average annual increase of about 1.7 percentage points. Among them, the online rate of K12 discipline training, preschool education and quality education increased from 1% to 5% - 8%. In recent years, the market share of low-school and quality education and K12 Discipline Training in the field of online education has continued to expand in the past two years, with the market share of 24.5% and 17.9% respectively in 2020.

The rise of Omo model

In the above two parts, the online merge offline model has become a new trend of online education enterprise transformation.

Since March 2020, New Oriental has set up an Omo team within the group, and each local school has also set up a separate Omo project department, and began to accelerate the layout of provincial online schools. The so-called provincial network school refers to the off-line schools in the strongest city in a province, and further radiates to other cities in the province with the help of network tools.

At present, the teaching scene of Omo is still offline, only through online arrangement and grading of course assignments to achieve Omo; However, with the upgrading of technology and software development, part of the future ground course will be moved to the online, connecting online teaching, ground teaching, preview before class, homework after class and other links to realize the online and offline connection.

Therefore, New Oriental puts the Omo model to the height of the company's strategy“ In at least the next two fiscal years, New Oriental will meet the growing teaching demand in the form of 80% offline + 20% online. " New Oriental said in its annual report.

Not only New Oriental, but also many educational leaders have continued to add weight to the Omo model. Since 2019, the offline leading institutions have begun to explore the Omo mode, and the strategic investment in Omo mode has been increased by TAL, the 1-to-1 leading university education (subordinate to Ziguang University, 000526ch) and elite education (oneus).

In this trend, higher requirements are put forward for the software development ability of educational institutions. According to Guoxin Securities Analysis, institutions that are unable to carry out online courses or whose cash flow is not enough to support their operations are facing exit one after another. The head company, with sufficient capital, technology, equipment, human resources support and flexible response ability, can quickly transfer offline students to online.

This also means that the "online" and "offline" boundaries of the teaching and training industry are becoming more blurred. According to the white paper on online education market in China in 2020 and prospective report in 2021 released by Key Laboratory of big data mining and knowledge management of Chinese Academy of Sciences in January 2021, online education industry is one of the industries with the largest investment and financing scale in 2020, and the financing amount of China's online education industry in this year is higher than the total financing amount of the industry in the previous ten years.

The blowout growth of online education reveals, to a certain extent, the growing anxiety of parents and students in the face of higher education, and also reflects the increasing recognition of online education mode after the epidemic.

The era of strict supervision is coming

However, in the process of over speed development of online education, problems such as false advertising, technical failure, poor quality, poor service and running away with money are frequently complained by consumers and exposed by media.

On April 25th this year, XRS, gaotu classroom, New Oriental online and Goss four out of school education and training institutions were reported on the official website of Beijing market supervision bureau for illegal price and false publicity, and were fined 500000 yuan by the top grid.

All along, online education institutions have taken "sales" and "publicity" as their core business. The financial reports of many educational institutions show that their sales expenses account for a large proportion. The sales expenses of learning from others (gaotu) increased from 1.040.9 billion yuan in 2019 to 5.812 billion yuan in 2020, accounting for 81.6% of its net income; Netease Youdao will spend nearly 2.7 billion yuan on marketing in 2020, with a year-on-year increase of 332.9%.

Xu Xiaoheng, an investment and financing expert, has previously said that the vicious competition promoted by capital has prompted teaching and training institutions to spend too much time and money on marketing, and the attribute of education is becoming weaker and weaker.

In addition, online off campus training institutions have caused widespread social concern due to "increasing the burden of primary and secondary school students" and "selling anxiety".

With the frequent occurrence of industry chaos and the expansion of influence, online education regulatory provisions are gradually clear. Since 2018, the state has issued many documents for the standardized management of teaching and training institutions, which ushered in the introduction of the most stringent regulatory policy in the history - transition period - implementation period.

In the two sessions of the National People's Congress in 2021, online education is also the focus of many representatives. For example, Wu minglan, deputy to the National People's Congress and a teacher of Liupanshui Experimental Primary School in Guizhou Province, suggested that electronic product manufacturers should be forced to adopt technical means or specialized in the production of children's electronic products, and that the sales restrictions on children's electronic products should be strictly controlled like tobacco and alcohol control. Liu Lin, member of the National Committee of the Chinese people's Political Consultative Conference (CPPCC) and President of China Private Education Association, has also made clear that it is suggested to improve the market access standards and approval management of online education institutions, and strengthen multi-party supervision, so as to build a regulatory system with clear rights and responsibilities, department coordination and management.

On May 21, the 19th meeting of the Central Committee for comprehensive deepening reform deliberated and adopted the opinions on further reducing the burden of students' homework and off campus training at the stage of compulsory education. As a result, the "double reduction" policy, which has attracted much attention in the education and training industry, will be officially implemented.

This also means that the era of strong supervision is coming. If the detailed rules of training institutions are issued, the living space of K12 related training institutions will be greatly squeezed.

Zhang Bin, the tutor of XRS online school, told 21st century economic news that he could really feel the change of the increasing supervision. Before, the tutoring students would assign certain homework after the course was over, but now he advocates solving problems in class, so as to reduce the students' learning burden“ In the face of learning guidance for young students, we will also focus on improving the interest of the course and let students learn by playing. In this way, they will have less pressure to learn. "

Chen Xiangdong, CEO of gaotu, once made it clear that "education should be slow. The competition is not a simple scale expansion, but a good teacher, good teaching, good service, good effect and good reputation."

In fact, the wild growth of online education in recent years is closely related to parents' group anxiety, which makes K12 and higher education become absolutely popular market segments in the past few years. In terms of urban distribution, in addition to the first tier cities such as Beijing, Shanghai, Guangzhou and Shenzhen, the number of enterprises engaged in online education in new first tier cities and second tier cities such as Wuhan and Hangzhou is also growing rapidly. At present, there is a trend of gradually sinking into third and fourth tier cities.

According to the filing information of education app released by the general office of the Ministry of education in early 2020, there are 251 institutions in Beijing that have registered 612 education apps, exceeding the total number of products in 2-8 cities. Chengdu and Hangzhou are in the second echelon of online education, with 74 and 63 institutions filing 165 and 112 education apps respectively. Wuhan and Hefei, Zhengzhou, Shanghai, Changsha, Jinan, Guangzhou, Suzhou are in the third echelon.

"The core of the so-called online education is the development level of Internet technology and the endowment of educational resources. This also indirectly explains why Beijing is on the top of the pack, while Hangzhou and Chengdu occupy the second tier because of the balanced development of their Internet industry and educational resources. " Zhu Xin, founder of a postgraduate entrance examination institution in Wuhan, told the 21st century economic reporter. However, in the past year or two, Wuhan has been developing rapidly. Some head offices, such as Suntech, are setting up parallel headquarters or teaching research and development centers from Beijing to Wuhan“ After the epidemic, Wuhan has issued tax incentive policies one after another. At present, the national level is gradually regulating the whole market. I believe that in the favor of strict supervision and head institutions, Wuhan's online education will develop better and better. "

Perhaps, driven by regulatory forces, industry competition is gradually becoming rational, and online education will also strive to return to the "source of education".

?