Graduates in the education and training industry: from an annual salary of 600,000 to two weeks after graduation, they are unemployed

farewell

Less than two weeks after graduation, Chen Lin received a notice of resignation. She signed a letter of intent for labor contract with an online educational institution during the spring 2021 recruitment, but on July 13, she had just completed the graduation ceremony at the entrance of Peking University's Qiu Deba Gymnasium, and on July 26, she received a notice of resignation. From graduation to unemployment, it was only 13 days.

"The past few months have been like a dream, and now it's shattered and I don't know where to pick it up." Chen Lin said. She joined this online educational institution by relying on the "inward push" of her friends. Friends joined the popular online education company in the fall of 2020. "Beautiful", the other party used this word to summarize his work in this education and training enterprise to Chen Lin.

In a sense, what my friend said is not wrong, it is the peak of education and training, and it is also the most crazy year. In 2020, the education and training industry reached its peak. The epidemic has broken the demand for online education, and the entire market has accelerated its penetration and expanded. According to the "China K12 Online Education Market Research and User Consumption Behavior Report" released by the Key Laboratory of Big Data Mining and Knowledge Management of the Chinese Academy of Sciences, the penetration rate of the K12 education industry reached a peak of 85% in March 2020. The research group predicts that the penetration rate of the K12 education industry is expected to exceed 55% in 2022.

The rapid expansion of the industry has made the demand for employees continue to expand. Chen Lin still remembers that when she first entered the company for internship, the seats in the office were constantly changing, "because people are joining every day." The colleague at the next station chatted with Chen Lin and said that when he joined the company, "from the resume to the final formal admission notice, it only took 3 days before and after." ”

At the same time, the education and training industry will gradually raise the threshold for entry, and graduates of famous schools will become fragrant.

"They need famous teachers from famous schools to help them make a sign." During the interview, the human resources of the education and training institution told Chen Lin that the school recruitment plan she participated in basically only recruited students from Tsinghua Peking University. In addition, only students majoring in English majors outside Beijing or Chinese language and literature majors in Beijing Normal University may be shortlisted.

Guo Hao is a student at Peking University's School of Foreign Chinese. He still remembers the scenes in the autumn of 2020, New Oriental, Good Future, Gauss... Education and training institutions lined up to hold a propaganda meeting at the Peking University Yingjie Exchange Center. He scanned the resumes of others, Chinese master's degree, ph.D. in the School of Physics, former winner of a mathematical competition... Stacks of paper full of writing are stacked on the desks of human resources.

The signboard of famous schools brings high basic salaries. "A guarantee of 600,000 yuan a year", this is the salary offered by human resources to Chen Lin. According to the "Online K12 Extracurricular Tutoring Industry Special Report" released by CITIC Securities in February 2020, the salary level of the main teachers is generally higher than 180,000 yuan a year, and the salary is mostly 200,000-400,000 yuan a year. Even not only employees, but also interns are well paid. Zheng Xi is a master's degree graduate of Peking University in 2020, and in the spring of 2020, he interned as a management trainee at an education and training institution. Affected by the epidemic, the company let her watch teacher training videos at home and listen to report meetings held by the organization. "At that time, I put the training video on and there, and the company could offer me a monthly internship salary of 5,000 yuan." Zheng Xi felt crazy, "The company is not rich and has no place to spend, it has to burn and play." “

In fact, at that time, the education and training industry was indeed favored by capital. According to media reports, as of December 2020, the funds invested in the education and training industry in that year have exceeded 50 billion yuan. In the last month of that year, Homework helped E+ round financing more than $1.6 billion, and the good future is set to increase by $3.3 billion... Lecturers from prestigious schools received labor contracts with high salaries, and some people switched jobs to do middle office operations, earning money that could only be earned in the previous position for two years in 3 months.

Now, the education and training industry has laid off a large number of employees. This year's graduates are faced with new career options.

Paid

Education and training have attracted a large number of young people. According to the "2019 Big Data Report on Teachers and Practitioners in the Education and Training Industry" released by a recruitment website, the proportion of undergraduate and master's degree practitioners in the education and training industry was 59.52% and 33.12% respectively. From the perspective of age group, the proportion of practitioners in the 25-30 age group reached 41%. Since the launch of an online education company's school recruitment program in 2020, it has recruited nearly 70 fresh graduates from top universities.

High salaries are an important factor in attracting graduates. There is an online education company that has played the slogan of "inject the heart, go all out". But at school admissions parties, peers would joke with each other: Why did you come to the company to inject your heart? It is to guarantee the annual salary of 600,000 yuan.

"This high salary is based on the consumption of your youth." Zheng Xi, who used to be a management trainee at an education and training institution, said. Some graduates laughed at themselves and said that entering the education and training industry was "just bad money" (qia, internet buzzword, from the dialect of southwest China "eat" - author's note). Zheng Xi feels that "rotten money" and "rotten" are in "you can't get too much promotion".

At that time, she was in charge of the language transition class of the primary school of the education and training institution, and she thought that she needed to buy primary six textbooks and junior high school textbooks, but her colleagues told her that she only needed to "grind the lessons" according to the lecture notes. In other words, the main teacher only needs to repeatedly deliberate and try out the lecture according to the handout distributed by the education and training institution. The content of the lecture notes is in great detail, and the teacher has no room to study and play in the past few years. "All teachers talk the same, and the only things that are different may be the passages that the teachers say." Zheng Xi said.

Teachers in the education and training industry need to do everything in their power to make students like you, so that students can continue to enroll in the next teacher's course and improve their personal renewal rate. The industry calls it "expressiveness.". Zheng Xi was "refreshed" in the expressive training class, and her trainer suggested that the children's attention could be attracted with shit-piss jokes.

Matching the renewal rate is the top-down marketing logic of the education and training industry. Some companies' marketing expenses have risen 7 times in one year. And the sales logic is derived to the employees, that is, pushing lessons and selling lessons.

Chen Lin's first course in the "grinding" of education and training institutions is to "push lessons" as the ultimate goal. In this one-and-a-half-hour class, she needs to spend at least 30 minutes to sell the course. During each practice session to the last half hour, her speed and expression would seem unnatural. Zheng Xi participated in the meeting of the company's teaching and research department, and the person in charge proposed to carry out the reform of "three axes of disciplines", the specific operation is to let the math teacher recommend the teacher of the chinese class in the classroom, and to promote the English class of the institution in the language classroom. The company requires Guo Hao to contact parents every day to ensure that students can successfully renew the course. "Some colleagues will call their parents and then ask for a renewal of the report. I can't do it, a lot of times it's clockwork WeChat. The purpose of the continuation report was too strong, and facing the parents on the other end of the phone, Guo Hao spoke to his mouth and stopped.

Chen Lin still remembers that when she submitted her graduation thesis, her supervisor asked her where she was going to graduate. Chen Lin found that she could not report the name of the company, and could only vaguely say "education industry". The instructor asked, "Public school or private school?" Chen Lin was silent.

leeway

Like many fresh graduates who enter the education and training industry, Chen Lin did not initially include this path in her life options.

Before that, she wanted to be a variety show producer. In the summer of her sophomore year, she was offered an internship at a top variety production company, but the reality was the complete opposite of her vision. "The task I was assigned was to record various games and bridges in Korean variety shows." That summer, she had nearly 60 Korean variety film sources on her computer, "You have no value in it, all your ideas and ideas, they will not watch, they only need you to complete the handling of the bridge like an assembly line worker." When the team leader threw his original copywriting that stayed up late on the desktop and shouted "You are pigs", Chen Lin silently read "The dream is dead" in her heart. She began to try again to improve grades, to keep research, and to continue her studies.

But things still didn't go as smoothly as she thought. During the summer vacation of the second semester of her junior year, she was told that she could not be exempted because she did not complete the credits of the required courses. Baoyan failed. The unoptimistic epidemic situation and the still tense Sino-US relations have also dispelled Chen Lin's desire to go abroad. Family members will often call, while blaming their daughter for not being able to make more preparations during the research period, on the other hand, urging her daughter to put the examination and research on the agenda, in the family's view, graduate students can become the "hard currency" of the job market. "At that time node, it seems that it is too late for the examination and research", Chen Lin was blindfolded, and according to her own words, she "lay flat for half a year". Confusion and struggle became the high-frequency words in Chen Lin's heart during this period, and she was squeezed out of the originally clear and knowable track.

In April 2021, entering the education and training institution allowed Chen Lin to briefly end the confused period. "Being able to make money is a factor," Chen Lin told reporters, "but more importantly, it makes me feel like I'm doing something." After signing the letter of intent, Chen Lin participated in the company's post-job training and threw herself into lectures, papers, and analysis of test questions.

"I also summed up a set of oral tips for the role of junior high school Chinese questions", Chen Lin spent less than a week to brush up on the "Five Years Middle School Examination Three-Year Simulation", "more serious than when I took the middle school exam myself." This is her long-lost state, life seems to have a grip, "although now I look back and feel that there is no practical significance, because this thing summary is meaningless, but at that time I felt that every day was good and full." 」 "After the regular meeting in the morning, Chen Lin would enter the live broadcast room to record lessons and lectures. The sound insulation effect of the live broadcast room is very good, it isolates the noise outside, and also temporarily isolates Chen Lin's confusion and anxiety.

Guo Hao also met the education and training industry during his confused period. Before entering the education and training enterprise school recruitment seminar, Guo Hao silently calculated an account in his heart. There is a lot of pressure and uncertainty in the examination and the examination, and other industries either do not match their majors or the salary is not suitable. In this way, the education and training industry that can go with the school signboard and has a salary of hundreds of thousands of yuan is a cost-effective choice.

On July 2, before waiting for the graduation ceremony of the school, Guo Hao rushed to the education and training institution to start the teaching of the first summer course. The agency's performance commission is calculated according to the number of classes, and if he does not rush to the first period, he will lose at least one-third of his salary this summer. He needs to start classes as soon as possible, because he knows that this job with a basic salary of 500,000 yuan can make him feel more confident when rejecting his parents' urging for graduate school and public examination; at the same time, he can convince himself - look, I have received so many years of education, I can still see the return on money.

"I certainly won't stay long" Guo Hao regards the industry of education and training, which has a low threshold for fast money, as a "temporary refuge", and the status of Peking University undergraduate can first allow himself to live a good year or two in it.

future

On July 24, the General Office of the CPC Central Committee and the General Office of the State Council issued the Opinions on Further Reducing the Homework Burden and Off-campus Training Burden of Students in the Compulsory Education Stage (hereinafter referred to as the "Double Reduction" Policy). It was Saturday, and according to the training requirements of the main lecturer, Chen Lin needed to participate in the company's course training. Colleagues saw the release of the "double subtraction" policy during the course. There was a commotion in the conference hall, colleagues constantly discussed, some people read the key sentences of the policy "resolutely prevent" and "strictly govern" and "achieve remarkable results in 3 years"; some people and colleagues confessed that they had made plans to withdraw more than a month ago, and continued to submit resumes to other companies; after the teachers who gave them lectures and training saw the policy, "their faces went black", Chen Lin described.

Chen Lin was not completely unexpected about this. In her view, the voice of regulating the education and training industry has never stopped. Before Chen Lin signed the letter of intent, at this year's two sessions of the National People's Congress, the problems in extracurricular training in the compulsory education stage attracted attention. In June, the Ministry of Education established the Department of Supervision of Off-campus Education and Training to manage the education and training industry. Capital sniffed this change earlier, and in the secondary market, the market value of education companies that soared last year shrank, among which the market value of Good Future shrank from $31.43 billion in mid-May to $15.09 billion in early July.

At about 11:00 the night before the "double reduction" policy was introduced, Chen Lin's friend went to the workstation to collect things, she saw that there was a computer screen on the workstation that was still lit, and a man in the workstation was lying on the swivel chair, thinking about his future, and he asked Chen Lin's friend: "Aren't you confused about your future?" He graduated from Peking University Mathematics College in 2020 and joined the junior high school mathematics lecturer for two years, and his performance indicators have always ranked first among the main teachers in junior high schools.

On July 13, Chen Lin got her graduation certificate, and a week after graduation, she got a formal contract. According to the arrangement, she will conduct a "grinding class" on Monday, July 26, and the company has arranged for a senior 10,000-person speaker to give her a review. She deliberately went to the barbershop and did a nursing treatment, hoping that the day of the official trial lecture would have a good image. But on the day of preparing the trial lecture, Chen Lin was told that she was "optimized".

After being "optimized", Chen Lin and a peer talked about future plans, and the other party complained that the process of re-finding a job now made me very irritable, because the salary was so low. "The education and training industry has made it impossible for me to have a clear understanding of my value in the job market." Chen Lin also has friends around her who have chosen undergraduate employment, but whether it is the Internet, civil servants, media... No industry can make a recent college graduate get paid so high: "Even if you are in finance, you don't necessarily get that much money in your first year." ”

Chen Lin was also looking forward to becoming a star lecturer, in the logic of the education and training industry, ten thousand lecturers is the ultimate goal of all practitioners, "they may earn millions of yuan a year." But now, everything is cleared to zero.

Shen Yuan entered the education and training industry in 2019, and the high salary is the reason why she is moved. In two years, Shen Yuan was laid off twice, but her salary continued to rise, and before she was laid off again, her monthly salary had risen from 6,000 yuan for her first job to 16,000 yuan. "At that time, many friends envied that I could make so much money."

Now that the bubble in the education and training industry has been squeezed out, Shen Yuan sneered: "I really thought that I could make so much money at a young age." ”

Chen Lin's family called her and asked her to hurry up and prepare for the IELTS test so that she could catch up with next year's application season. Guo Hao has not yet received the notice of dismissal, but he feels that the salary that can be obtained is getting less and less, and "if I can't get a high salary, it will go against my original intention of entering the industry." He plans to leave after this class, but what about after leaving? Looking for a job? He didn't seem to have thought about it yet.

(At the request of the interviewee, Chen Lin, Guo Hao, Zheng Xi, and Shen Yuan are pseudonyms)

Intern Lu Siwei Guo Yibo Source: China Youth Daily

Source: China Youth Daily