Online Learning in China: The Future of Education or an Unregulated Nightmare?

Online Learning in China: The Future of Education or an Unregulated Nightmare?
Mar 31, 2016 By eChinacities.com

Editor's Note: "Teachers don't get paid nearly enough." Maybe not in the classroom, but online teachers in China are making thousands of Yuan for digital classes. The amount of money they are making has caught the attention of netizens, and they are starting to ask questions. The translated article reports on the new phenomenon.

An online tutor in Nanjing with an hourly salary of 18,000 Yuan has recently gone viral in China. The tutor’s high paycheck has caused netizens to ask if a) if the story is even true, and b) how a teacher can make so much money online.

How Does He Earn That Much?
The online tutor in question teaches high school level physics courses online. Each students pays 9 Yuan to subscribe to the course, and 2,617 students purchased the course at the same time. The online teaching platform the tutor uses takes 20% of the profits, so the tutor is left with 18,842 Yuan for about an hour of teaching.

On the same platform, a teacher named Wang Yu taught seven courses to a total 9,479 people and earned 84,000 Yuan. With the 20% deduction from the online platform, Wang still walked away with more than 67,000 Yuan.

This is more than the most popular female news anchors earn in China. A female news anchor on a popular news program earns about 15,000 to 30,000 Yuan for 3-5 hours of work.

A number of online tutoring platforms have up to 15 million registered students and offer middle school and high school level courses in foreign languages, geography, history, chemistry, physics, biology, and eight other subjects.

Are the Teachers Qualified?
The amount of compensation is less controversial, however, than the identity of these online teachers. How do we know that these are quality teachers? Secondly, when teachers figure out they can earn so much money on a single class, will they stop caring about their day jobs?

The industry of online tutoring is not regulated by China’s Ministry of Education, which has caused some concerns. The Ministry of Education actually prohibits primary and secondary school teachers as working as paid tutors. However, online tutors usually call themselves “coaches,” or “counselors” to get around this, which has caused controversy in the industry. The Nanjing Bureau of Education has stated that “online coaching,” is clearly a form of off-campus paid tutoring and should be banned.

Less Than A Bowl of Noodles
The phenomena also brings up the question as to whether tutoring in public schools in China is behind the curve on technology. Tutoring in public schools is generally done in the classroom and at home by parents. Schools seem to be resistant to moving forward and using technology in order to save time and effort. Schools have the chance to compete by providing their own form of online tutoring for their students by their best teachers.

The most successful online tutors are earning much more than 18,000 Yuan an hour. A well-known math teacher named Wang Xiao charges 880 Yuan per student for a two and a half hour class. With 15 sessions, and 1,862 students, Wang earns more than 40,000 Yuan per hour. He makes millions of Yuan a year from his online courses.

For many students, the courses are well worth it. 9 Yuan for a physics class, or 23 Yuan for a math class is equivalent to a price of a bowl of noodles in a big city like Beijing, Shanghai, and Guangzhou. For students and their families- the gains are enormous. After taking the classes, students generally score much higher on tests. Parents are happy to spend 20 Yuan on an investment like this.

Online learning has helped more students have access to excellent teachers, and is helping to solve the issue of uneven distribution of educational resources in many regions in China. Students in Henan can learn from teachers in Beijing and Shanghai. Online classes are also much cheaper than seeing a tutor, who often charge hundreds of Yuan per hour for a face-to-face lesson. The Ministry of Education has repeatedly stressed the need to promote online learning and education and regulate the industry to promote high-quality education.

Source: QQ News

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Keywords: cruise digital classroom education online teachers classes

5 Comments

All comments are subject to moderation by eChinacities.com staff. Because we wish to encourage healthy and productive dialogue we ask that all comments remain polite, free of profanity or name calling, and relevant to the original post and subsequent discussion. Comments will not be deleted because of the viewpoints they express, only if the mode of expression itself is inappropriate.

nashy

I'll be looking into this straight away...

Apr 07, 2016 20:27 Report Abuse

Guest14367640

i teach in Educhat app, make around 80-100 per class

Apr 05, 2016 17:49 Report Abuse

nashy

And me

Apr 09, 2016 15:28 Report Abuse

Guest2480492

So what's the name of this platform ?

Mar 31, 2016 22:51 Report Abuse

Stiggs

In a public school the students might think the teacher is worthless and they're learning nothing, but they can't change that. With this system if people aren't seeing some results they stop paying. That will weed out the good from the bad. If the law that says teachers can't have a second job is enforced, I could see the best teachers quitting their day school jobs. Why would you deal with all the office politics and other bullshit that goes with a public school job when you could make a LOT more money,work from home and not have to kiss ass to all of your power tripping managers and headmaster?

Mar 31, 2016 20:46 Report Abuse