Online teachers – the rising Internet stars in China

World
Europe

A new breed of teachers are gaining recognition in China thanks to the power of Internet – they are young, enjoy an almost celebrity status and challenge public perceptions of traditional education.

Online teachers in China are benefiting from the country’s intimate relation with the Internet, the warming up of Chinese people to paid content and their willingness to spend big on courses catering to their needs.

Online teachers, instructors who make a living thanks to Internet-enabled platforms, are slowly becoming one of the faces of China’s evolving education system thanks to digital economy. According to China News Service, they are aged between 25 and 35, and over half of them are male tutors.

But these demographics are changing, as retired teachers and university students slowly but steadily join the expanding group.

CGTN screenshot of website of CCtalk, an online English learning website.

These teachers also earn big.

One of the most famous stars in the field of e-learning is Chen Zhiyuan, who teaches English on CCtalk, a real-time interactive education platform by Shanghai-based e-learning platform Hujiang. An English course he instructs recently raked in over 100,000 yuan (15,800 US dollars) within an hour after it was open for registration, and earned over 250,000 yuan (39,600 US dollars) in one day.

Chen is also the first teacher whose annual earnings exceed one million yuan (58,650 US dollars) on the platform.

Despite the popularity of his course, Chen is not a fan of the term "online celebrity", and insists that all he does is spreading knowledge to students through a new medium.

China’s e-learning industry has been rapidly growing in recent years.

According to iResearch Consulting Group, the online education market in China in 2017 was worth 200 billion yuan (32 billion US dollars) – a staggering 30-percent increase on an annual basis. The industry is expected to continue its growth in the next year, reaching 272.7 billion yuan (43.3 billion US dollars) in 2019.

CCtalk established the industry's first online teacher entrepreneurship club in 2016. /Chinanews Photo

“Slipper man” Yan is another popular online teacher on CCtalk, known for his preparatory journalism and communication courses for the National Postgraduate Entrance Examination in China. At first, his online classes attracted a handful of students. But after he started broadcasting online, his courses reached 100,000 views in the course of just four years, Beijing Youth Daily reported.

Over 1,000 students now pay to virtually "attend" his class, while 3,700 students have signed up for his other free courses.

However, as the industry grows, so does the controversy surrounding it, especially regarding the academic credentials of online teachers.

According to a recent survey by China Youth Daily, over 87.2 percent of respondents said they had taken online courses. More than half of them (54.1 percent) thought online teachers had various professional levels, and more than 50.4 percent of them hoped online teaching platforms could strengthen the entry requirements for teachers to ensure quality.

The CEO of Hujiang Education and Technology Corporation Fu Cairui said that with the growing number of online teachers, every individual could be a tutor in this age. He noted that with the rise of online teachers, the industry will progress and experience new opportunities, Chinanews reported.