This education company has siphoned off hundreds of millions of yuan in tuition fees from students, and has also encouraged students to pay loans in installments, can you believe it?
Employees were not only forcibly terminated from their labor contracts, but also owed wages for several months, and thousands of social security payments were cut off, can you believe this? The above practices are all from this company, which has been established for decades and is known as the leading brand of vocational education in China - Let's start classes.
In this issue, let's talk about the truth of the company's defeat, first of all, what kind of education company is the opening of the course, is it the first company, founded in 2012, the opening of the course was born in the founder Fang Yechang, founded in 2010 Huike Education Group, at that time Fang Yechang was still a returnee who had just returned to China, with a heart of science and technology to rejuvenate the country Doctor of returnees, in the 12 years is in the gestation period of domestic Internet development, Meituan, Xiaomi, iQiyi and a large number of Internet companies are in urgent need of Internet-based talents, So let's start a course with IT technology as the main category of vocational education, including data analysis, J**A Python and other IT technology courses, to Tencent, Alibaba, Huawei and other Internet giants to deliver talents, in the college student group and on-the-job groups are widely acclaimed, at that time, the former Kingsoft word tyrant CTO Wang Haiming, and iQiyi's first product director Gao Wei and others.
In 2015, under the promotion of the ** "Internet +" policy, the course bar has obtained more than 3 million user registrations, but the ambition of the boss of Fang is not limited to this, in 2016, "the course bar" has acquired "wireless Internet", "tobacco education", "beautiful college" and other three vocational education institutions, 18 years and the exclusive signing of python tutor - Liao Xuefeng as the course strategic consultant.
It wasn't until 2020 that the course began to go more and more wrong, and that year, Fang Yechang decided to officially split the "class bar" from its parent company, Huike Group, and independently obtained 5500 million yuan, this financing can be called the largest single financing in the history of new vocational education, which shows that "let's start classes" was quite valued by capitalists at that time.
But the crisis is also slowly approaching, 21 years, with the introduction of the double reduction policy, the development of K12 education has been blocked, and even the 28-year-old New Oriental has been affected by this, and "let's start classes" still rely on the ** education model, obtained the first round of huge financing of 600 million yuan, so Fang Yechang, who was favored by capital, was a little floating, he began to rapidly expand various course businesses, almost what industry fire in the society, he will immediately set up the corresponding department to start classes. From graduate school entrance examinations to vocational qualification exams, from career planning to fortune-telling metaphysics, this has led to a result - the quality of the curriculum and the level of teachers are far from keeping up with the speed of its start.
For example, a postgraduate examination course is sold very hot, and it costs more than 20,000 yuan to report a refund class, according to a student who broke the news, after opening an online class, the teacher who lectured was not at all the same person as the famous teacher who first tried the class, and the quality of online teaching was very poor, and some little-known teachers were talking.
Soon, "Let's start classes" suddenly began to lay off employees on a large scale, some people were owed wages for 2 to 3 months, some people had physical conflicts in the process of asking for wages, thousands of people were cut off from paying social security, and tens of thousands of students were declaring tuition fees. Generally, in order to gain customers and attract students to buy, "start the course" implemented a 1 yuan trial class to attract traffic, and then through the ** agreement class, scholarship class, to induce users to buy paid courses, simply put, you take my class, and complete the corresponding course on time, you can return all the course fees according to the regulations, according to this promise is basically 1 penny to listen to the class without spending it, who doesn't want to? But the paid courses that start classes are often tens of thousands of yuan, how can young people afford to spend them?
So the course bar and encourage students to use the installment payment platform loan payment with its cooperation, worrying things happened, "start the course" did not fulfill the promise to refund, a chain crisis was born, according to a student broke the news, he paid in installments, 16,800 yuan, divided into 12 installments, according to the monthly repayment of 1,0400 yuan, but when the class reached the sixth period, it suddenly stopped, the class was not finished, but the installment had to be repaid, and there were nearly thousands of students like him, From a few thousand yuan to more than 100,000 yuan, in a course bar arrears of students tuition statistics table shows that the registered students to buy the course payment amount, a total of 57.08 million yuan, of which the unreturned amount of more than 47 million, and this number is still growing, in the face of the debt snowball is getting bigger and bigger, the founder of the course bar Fang Yechang in the letter to the staff, said that he is currently in debt of more than one billion, the company has come to the point of bankruptcy, frankly admitted that he is selling assets, to ensure that the course can be lived.
So what is his way of guaranteeing to live? Fang Yechang re-registered a new company called, Beijing Happy Future, for science and technology promotion and application services, with a registered capital of 200,000 yuan, many people think that he is demolishing the east wall to make up for the west wall, saying that before the West Qiang raised so much money, and there were nearly 100 million yuan of student tuition, all of which were spent to **, according to relevant reports, the money for the start of the course was actually used to advertise, once K12 advertising seats, now have been inherited by vocational education, from the elevator to the bus stop light box, from the short ** To social platforms, you can see the overwhelming advertisements of the course bar, there are ** reports, the course bar has to pay tens of millions of monthly delivery fees, the marketing model of casting a wide net is indeed useful, can attract a lot of students, but how to fool the low-quality and even deceptive teaching content?
After signing up for the course, many students found that the teaching quality of the course was surprisingly poor, not as good as advertised, and some teachers did not even have the qualifications to practice, and the deceived consumers complained about a large number of refunds, but the course was not refunded, and they chose to turn a blind eye. As a result, the reputation of the class began to plummet.
Fang Yechang completely made the business a one-time transaction, which is the biggest reason for its failure, first over-expansion with the help of capital, and through the huge amount of advertising and marketing expenses to make a full façade, and then use the low price ** to earn traffic, and finally use the agreement class installment payment to induce consumption, this series of operations seems to be smooth, but in step by step to bury mines, let's start the course forget the essence of knowledge payment, not with a low-cost 1 yuan trial class in exchange for the number of students, Instead, it should be used to win the reputation of high-quality teaching content and high-level teachers, but the course has not developed in this direction at all.
Moreover, relying on the high tuition fees prepaid by students to stimulate their own cash flow, how long can it last, once there is a gap in cash flow in the later stage, the company will inevitably go bankrupt, Fang Yechang himself admits that now the cash flow gap of each month is about 100 million, then, when a promise becomes a blank check, when education becomes a business of forced buying and selling, when capital uses innocent self-motivation to make huge profits, we have to ask, now those companies under the banner of education, are they really worthy of the word education?
According to the complaint Bao accepted the ** user complaints in the field of education, the course bar is only ranked ninth in the complaint of the education enterprise, it is conceivable that on the road of education commercialization, we still can not avoid the desecration and play of the essence of education by capital, and then return to the class, this once sent talents to the large factory of the education enterprise, but the entire vocational education development regression side of the failure of the epitome, and we hope that the country can provide a legitimate, can really protect young people, complete the benign channel of self-development, At the same time, we will actively crack down on unscrupulous educational institutions, remove the cancer of society, and give justice and justice to those students who have been deceived by the pit.