Staging has obviously boosted the performance of enterprises. More than 50% of the students studying in Darnay Technology use educational staging; Of Hujiang's 500 million income, 20% comes from installment payment. ...
The so-called education staging is actually the tuition staging. Financial institutions first pay tuition fees to online education institutions in one lump sum, and students pay them to the staging platform on schedule. Education by stages seems to be a good product for financial institutions, students and educational enterprises. However, in this seemingly seamless industrial chain, I don't know when it began to deviate from the original track.
The data shows that in the third quarter of 20 18, there were 1 120 effective complaints in the national education and training industry, involving 100 businesses. Among them, Suntech, Dana Education, Wall Street English, EF Education and other institutions have become the focus of condemnation, and most of the complaints are related to education staging.
The tuition arrears of "top students 1 vs 1" suspended on 20 18 are as high as more than 20 million, and a large number of parents of students have chosen education staging products similar to "education loans".
Who promoted education staging?
20 16-20 17, many educational and training institutions overuse phased products to recruit students; In order to seize the market, many staging platforms relax risk control; A large number of training institutions have run away, and students have no way to complain, and the training industry has been hit hard.
"Education service is highly subjective. Even if there is no malicious fraud, consumers' dissatisfaction with the training effect will lead to refund disputes, which will lead to a decrease in the willingness to repay loans. On the whole, education credit is not regarded as a quality business by the industry. "Xue Hongyan, director of the Internet Finance Center of Suning Financial Research Institute, once told the media. However, the demand for education market, which grows geometrically every year, is still there.
"After 20 16 and 20 17, the education staging market is now mature, and many institutions have been cultivating it before." An education installment loan industry insider said frankly: "Moreover, merchants are highly accepted and the market scale is large."
20 17 12. the mutual fund reform office and the online loan reform office issued the notice on standardizing and rectifying the cash loan business. As a leader in the consumer finance industry, cash loans have turned off. The cash loan business without scene support is suspected of violating the rules. Driven by the policy, phased education has once again become a hot potato.
Initially, the incision of financial services in education by stages was in the IT field. "Because of the high degree of acceptance, the customer base is college students or social people who have undergone off-the-job training. They are eager for career promotion and have a desire to learn. " The insider said. The unit price of it training is high, and many training institutions even put forward the "X+ Y" scheme in the early stage, that is, during the training period, students only need to pay a small amount of interest, and then repay the principal and interest after the training is over and they find a job. "This is actually a balloon loan. However, even after graduation, students are not so good at finding jobs and are prone to disputes. "
Nowadays, educational staging products have already spread to K 12 field. "In the field of K 12, the paying group is parents, and the B-side merchants don't say it. At least the risk of the C-side paying group is relatively low and controllable." The insider said.
Most of the consumer finance enterprises that participated in the education scene in the early days cooperated with offline education and training institutions such as Beida Jade Bird and Dana. Nowadays, the online education market is huge, and it has become a gold digger for many staging platforms. The person in charge of Haier Consumer Finance Online once told the media: "We found that the asset quality of online education staging is also significantly better than other scenarios, while the overdue rate of online education staging assets of Haier Consumer Finance is less than 1%."
Moving the scene online is more difficult for authentication, and the refund rate of online mode is much higher than offline.
"The current education staging platform still fails to solve the problem of risk control well. In fact, it is difficult to fully understand an educational institution. Once an education company runs away, it is almost a disaster. " An education staging industry insider said.
Education in stages, let the capital see who is swimming naked in the cold winter.
"In the education industry, staging is very common." The front-end salesperson of an educational institution told Blue Whale Education: "It's all for business and performance. Other institutions need it except that the business is too good for students to worry about. "
"Compared with offline, online education needs education staging more." He further added.
Online education has been flourishing all the way before. According to the data of Prospective Research Institute, from 20 14 to 20 16, the growth rate of online education market rose linearly, and the annual growth rate rose rapidly from 18.9% to 27.3%. In just four years, VIPKID has grown into an education giant with annual sales of 5 billion yuan.
The mode of burning money is also accompanied by the birth of online education. None of the six listed pure online education enterprises made a profit. The average customer acquisition cost of online enterprises is 58%, which is significantly higher than that of offline institutions; The conversion rate of paying users is low, generally below 10%, and the liquidity is not strong.
"The refund rate and renewal rate vary greatly among institutions. When the economic cycle is good, everyone doesn't care and investors don't care. " 1 The person in charge told 1 founder and CEO Zhang Yi.
However, only when the tide recedes can we see who is swimming naked.
From 20 17, the growth rate of online education began to slow down. In the first half of 20 18, the scale of funds raised was $34 1 billion, and 201342 million, a year-on-year decrease of 74.59%.
The capital winter is coming, and the first thing that can't be stretched is the online track 1 to 1. "Top students 1 vs 1" and "Li You 1 vs 1" were shut down, and the founder ran away with the money, leaving a chicken feather all over the place. However, when you take a class, you successfully hold the throat of online education. People gradually found that online education has been growing at a high speed, and the cost of acquiring class hours has also increased geometrically.
In order to ensure growth and performance, from August 2065438 to August 2008, an online education enterprise in Shanghai was exposed to using phased products to brush the bills crazily, and its sales soared from 1 100 million yuan to 300 million yuan in a few months.
Staged education has played an important role in this fierce competition. An industry insider directly pointed out: "Now the cost of getting classes is getting higher and higher, and education staging can improve the conversion rate. Why not? " For quick success and instant benefit, the focus of many training institutions has even become "soliciting customers" and false enrollment propaganda, which has allowed some people who have no repayment ability to enter the market and left behind future troubles. More hidden dangers are yet to come. Many enterprises use installment products to obtain tuition fees paid by installment platform at one time, thus supplementing cash flow. The Ministry of Education requires educational institutions to charge no more than three months at a time, which has become a new form of edge ball by stages.
"However, advance payment is not equal to cash flow. Enterprises charge their parents' fees in advance for a long time, plus their own cash, mistakenly thinking that cash flow is the sum of the two. A series of budget arrangements based on this are problematic. Once you encounter a run, it is easy to collapse. " An investor added.
Another industry insider who specializes in education staging revealed: "Because many enterprises are under the banner of' zero interest and zero handling fee', this part of the actual handling fee interest needs to be subsidized by the enterprises themselves to the education staging institutions. Once there is a large-scale refund problem, the impact on enterprises will be great. "
Should education be staged?
"At present, staged products are widely used in the field of education because of the requirement for rapid growth." According to Yu Min, co-founder of Sanhao.com, "Education by stages has not brought any changes in essence, which is equivalent to finding an institutional loan in the name of users. Staging has no benefit to the education industry and is a kind of consumer finance. "
Xu Min, CFO of 5 1Talk, said: "For our education company, staging is not to supplement cash flow, but actually to help parents lower the threshold of payment. It may be difficult for parents to pay 10 thousand yuan at a time, and the bank may not have that much deposit. At this time, with staged products, parents can pay zero down payment and let their children attend classes. " In his view, staged products can really provide convenience for consumers, and educational institutions can use staged products, but they should not be used as sales tools for enterprises.
This has also been recognized by Yu Min. If the enterprise is not centered on teaching service, but driven by strong sales, even if it brings customers in stages, the quality of related courses can't keep up, and the refund rate is still high.
In fact, "Internet+Education+Finance" is a model proved by the market, and the phased education demand does exist. A consumer financial service practitioner firmly believes: "Consumer finance is an indispensable part of future life, and everyone will participate in it to some extent. Staging is just a tool that can make a good company run faster and make a company die faster. The key is to look at the nature of educational institutions. "