Text/ He Jipai Editor/ Chen Xiaoping
K12 online education, quietly preparing for the great retreat in the silent waiting.
Ape tutoring, homework help, VIPKID, Gaotu and other head platforms, layoff news has gone away, and the proportion of business layoffs is as high as 50%.
"Demand has fallen off a cliff in the last week." In mid-June, Wang Song, the headhunter who specializes in education lines, told the "21CBR" reporter that since April, the recruitment volume of online education companies has become less, the demand for front-line positions has declined, the requirements have increased, the recruitment cycle has become longer, and the signs of tightening after June have become more obvious.
"In the direction of teaching and research, the recruitment needs of Ape Tutoring, Homework Help and Gaotu have been completely stopped, and only byte's Qingbei Online School still has some demand." Wang Song revealed.
Capital has been in full swing, and on the 16th and 17th, education stocks listed in the United States have fallen sharply. Reuters quoted sources as saying the upcoming new regulations on education and training "will be stricter than expected and the industry should prepare for the worst." ”
Mountain rain is coming
The signal of the wind and rain was there at the beginning of the year.
In January, the Central Commission for Discipline Inspection and the State Supervision Commission named the chaos of online education, pointing out that the cost of customer acquisition is high and the industry is seriously consumed, and raised three questions: Who is the main body of the enterprise? What problems does the large-scale involvement of capital raise? How can regulation be strengthened?
In the past six months, a number of leading educational institutions have been given warnings and penalties, involving false publicity, price gouging and so on.
The most recent centralized penalty occurred on June 1, when 15 off-campus training institutions fined 36.5 million yuan and focused on first-tier cities and large institutions.
The focus of the rise and fall of the industry lies in the "double reduction" policy.
Since March, Beijing has strictly investigated the education and training market, requiring primary and secondary school subjects, foreign language language proficiency and subject training institutions highly related to the middle and high school entrance examinations to stop offline training and collective activities.
On May 21, the Opinions on Further Reducing the Burden of Homework and Off-campus Training on Students in the Compulsory Education Stage were deliberated and passed, and the "double reduction" entered the deliberations of China's highest decision-making level.
In the official press release, the phenomenon of "reducing the burden on the school and increasing the burden outside the school" is prominent, emphasizing that "it is strictly forbidden to operate at will capitalization, and the industry of conscience cannot be allowed to become a profit-seeking industry." Everyone understands that this time it is time to move.
Subsequently, a number of provincial education departments said that the "double reduction" is the number one project of education supervision this year.
On June 15, the Department of Supervision of Off-campus Education and Training was established, and the senior management of the Ministry of Education attended, requiring the newly built department to "have more people's feelings, more spirit of struggle, more rule of law thinking, and more work strategies", and promote the implementation of the "double reduction" work in the spirit of "nailing nails".
Subsequently, Reuters reported that the government's planned control measures, including a trial ban on holiday tuition and restrictions on advertising, "expect the new rules to be announced as early as next week and take effect next month." ”
On June 17, a new picture of the "online class for primary and secondary school students" as a type of cybercrime report was all over the Internet, and this setting was originally derived from the epidemic period in 2020, and was deliberately enlarged in the current public opinion field.
As early as the end of March, an education company executive in charge of government affairs heard about the upcoming "double reduction" policy, describing it as the "atomic bomb of the online education industry."
At least in the capital market, there has indeed been a "nuclear explosion", and panic has spread in an all-round way.
In just 5 months, the stock price of Good Future fell from a high of $90.96 to a minimum of $20.51, and New Oriental probed from $19.97 to $7.36.
Gaotu's shock was the most tragic, peaking at $149.05, and the latest closing price was only $12.56, evaporating a market value of more than 220 billion yuan.
Recruitment stopped
The proactive tightening of education companies was evident at least 3 months ago.
According to the Lagou Recruitment Data Research Institute, the job release index and job delivery index of online education began to decline slightly in April, and plummeted in May, and the supply and demand ends cooled rapidly.
The proportion of online education talents (with online education experience within 1 year) in the job search status, this year in the "has left, can quickly arrive at the post" user ratio of 98.1%, an increase of 24.9% over the same period last year.
In the past year, the education and training industry has been recruiting, in the 2020/21 fiscal year, Good Future expanded by 25643 people, and the smaller NetEase Youdao, the absolute number increased by only 3250 people, an increase of 191%.
In 2017, when Gaotu Classroom was established, it was only a small team of 7 people, and after 3 years, it has developed into a large organization of 13,000 people, increased by 16,135 people in 2020, and officially announced that as many as 10,000 jobs were opened to college graduates in September.
According to an announcement of "Spark Plan Management Trainee 2021 Spring Recruitment" announced that as of October 2020, the Chengdu branch alone, that is, more than 2,000 people, offered a monthly salary of 7,000-10,000 yuan for fresh graduates, and 13 salaries for the whole year.
Benefits include: equipped with a computer, a mobile phone, an iPad-pro and iPencil4; a monthly meal supplement of 500 (onboarding) + a monthly comprehensive subsidy of 600 (signed a labor contract to enjoy); the annual meeting will issue 2,000 yuan of Jingdong shopping cards per person, and will invest 2 million yuan to the annual meeting lottery link (the first place 10,000 yuan dream fund).
The expansion stalled, affecting a large number of fresh graduates.
Yao Zheng, who graduated this summer, interviewed the position of mathematics teacher in Hangzhou Gaotu at the end of April and got an offer, and received an HR notice in early June, the company's official seal was borrowed, the tripartite agreement could not be stamped, when to stamp, whether it could be mailed, the other party did not respond. On the third day, HR called to inform that it was the last day of the stamp of the three parties, and not coming was regarded as a abandonment, and Yao Zheng knew that "I couldn't go."
Yao Zheng told the "21CBR" reporter that in order to wait for Gaotu to enter the job, he gave up two offers, and the original docking of Gaotu HR also left in early June, and the other party privately gave advice, "If there are other offers on hand, consider coming again, there are adjustments within the company, try to see other job opportunities."
He is now ready to find other jobs or part-time jobs to transition to graduate school.
Zhang Cancan, a former tutor at the Chengdu branch of Homework Help, told the "21CBR" reporter that the company will not take the initiative to lay off employees, but hopes that employees will leave their jobs on their own in order to save a compensation.
Waist companies are also starting to catch up.
A certain education and training institution whose core main business is a big language, recently abolished some of the business lines after 8 p.m., and the relevant employees or internal transfers, or take compensation to leave, the internal meeting mentioned that the future will try to expand the science and technology and other methods for development.
Internal employees told 21CBR that there are high-level judgments that the details of the "double reduction" rectification will be issued at the end of June and the beginning of July, "at that time, the big layoff storm may really come." ”
Or stop or turn
There is no safe haven for education and training institutions, and they begin to shrink their fronts or find another way out.
The head K12 players mostly extend the business line to the young age group, ape tutoring has zebra AI lessons, homework help has duck and duck enlightenment, and high road has early enlightenment.
Due to the repeated prohibition of advanced and over-program training, extracurricular education and training at the young age stage is the focus of this round of supervision, especially the "Law on the Protection of Minors" implemented in June stipulates that "kindergartens and off-campus training institutions shall not conduct primary school curriculum education for preschool minors".
Chen Xiangdong, CEO of Gaotu, said at an internal meeting that it was not until the new round of publicity of the "Protection of Minors Law" that he suddenly woke up, "It turns out that what we are doing today is something that is prohibited at the legal level." ”
At the end of May, Gaotu cut its xiaoxiao enlightenment business focusing on 3-8-year-old children, and the scale of layoffs involved more than 1,000 employees, and Gaotu provided a "living water plan" for the members of the xiaoxiao project, and those who did not find suitable positions had to leave.
A number of brands that focus on the low-childhood enlightenment line have changed their names and adjusted their routes.
In April, the "Zebra AI Class" was upgraded to "Zebra", which not only has comprehensive subject learning, expands reading content such as picture book libraries, but also prepares to launch more quality subjects such as writing and music.
At the end of May, Ruisi Education announced the brand upgrade, in addition to the English section, added quality education businesses such as Randian Science Museum, Ruisi Research And learning, and Ruisi Haiya Growth Space.
As far as the main business of K12 is concerned, at present, the head company has not made a big move, but has just expanded new customer acquisition channels, stepped up understanding of the school business, short video live broadcast and other models, and coped with all possibilities. It is reported that K12 training may not allow ads.
In the process of waiting for the "double subtraction" rules, rumors kept ringing.
On the 18th, Yu Minhong, the founder of New Oriental, refuteed the rumors on a network of information, arguing that he did not know any news, with a sigh of "life is not easy, why do you still have to stab the knife in the back."
After leaving his post, Zhang Cancan did not miss this industry at all, and the tutor was to make calls every day, bombarding parents to buy classes, "there are strict telephone number assessment requirements, guarantee the length of time, but also enough phone calls"; due to the huge flow of personnel, "recruitment is all group faces, hundreds of people at a time." ”
The buzz is gone.
Wang Song told 21CBR that the company has a headhunting colleague who did teaching and research positions alone last year, and the annual performance was close to 2 million yuan, because each education company will mention nearly 200 indicators per month. Demand plummeted this year, and not long ago he was transferred to the technical line.
"We knew from the beginning that that madness would come to an end one day." She said.
(At the request of the interviewees, Wang Song, Yao Zheng, and Zhang Cancan are pseudonyms.) ）
For more information, please download the 21 Finance APP