[NTD, Beijing time, March 28, 2022]Wanmen University, an online education institution in mainland China, has always advertised itself as “lowering the threshold for higher education and promoting fairness in educational resources”. Recently, its APP suddenly failed to log in. The students who spent tens of thousands of yuan to buy courses found that they had been kicked out of the VIP group inexplicably, and later found that the company that founded this online university had locked its doors. The whereabouts are unknown, and it is suspected that the money has been collected and run away.
According to Lu media reports, Tong Zhe, who has a tyrannical design of Peking University, used to be a role that students look up to in the eyes of colleges and universities, and “Wanmen University” is the best tool for many college students to prepare for exams. However, Tong Zhe’s fans were surprised to find recently that the app under Wanmen Education could no longer log in, and they had been removed from the VIP group of students of Wanmen University. Tong Zhe’s WeChat avatar and nickname have also been changed. The former “Xueba” of Peking University, who had a great reputation in the past, disappeared like the world evaporated.
Up to now, more than 3,000 people have registered to defend their rights, and most of them have bought courses for one-year, three-year or even lifelong VIP members of Wanmen University, with tuition fees ranging from several thousand to 20,000. For many of them, Tong Zhe ran away with money, not only caused them a lot of economic losses, but also collapsed their ideals.
“Network University” founded by elites studying abroad at Peking University
In 2012, Tong Zhe, a second-year master student at the Ecole Normale Supérieure de Paris, began to record “A Zhe’s Physics Lesson” in his dormitory. The lesson he taught, recorded and edited became popular as soon as it went online. On platforms such as Renren.com, each class has more than 30,000 hits.
Seven months later, Tong Zhe bought a ticket for his parents and flew back to China. He registered the public homepage of “Wanmen University” on Renren, the largest density of highly educated young people at the time, and founded China’s first online education institution “Wanmen University”. University”. At that time, Tong Zhe’s banner was “Free Internet University”. He said that “Wanmen” is the homonym of “One-man” in English, which means “everyone is their own university”, and his original intention of founding Wanmen University “just wanted to give others a chance to learn”.
The slogan that Tong Zhe repeatedly emphasized at the time was “lowering the threshold of higher education and promoting the real education resource sharing”. He claimed that the three normal curves designed on the emblem of Wanmen University symbolized “the power of reason”.
Tong Zhe’s published resume is full of halo. In the third year of high school, he was recommended to be sent to Peking University because of the first place in the competition. Later, he studied for a master’s degree in Paris, France. His major is still the most difficult physics-related.
Wanmen University has tens of thousands of students in just 4 months after its launch. Tong Zhe is known as “Chief Principal”. Since 2013, Tong Zhe, as the founder of Wanmen University, has given lectures in major universities across the country. He has completed lecture tours in more than 30 universities within a month. There are more than 50 public homepages of branches and departments.
Lectures were once the greatest competitiveness of Wanmen University
Wanmen University once opened an important course in July 2013—theoretical physics special training course. Tong Zhe called this cram school “the most high-end cram school in China’s private training industry”, and its contents include but are not limited to: advanced mathematics, probability and statistics, quantum mechanics, quantum field theory, relativity, string theory… 34 days, including 28 full-day courses and 7 two-hour physics lectures.
After the special training, the 12 students of this course became comrades-in-arms, and the course video was also uploaded to the Internet, becoming a milestone part of Wanmen University. At that time, Tong Zhe was also full of hope for the future and devoted himself to the management of Wanmen University.
The start-up Wanmen University has only a few staff members. Except for specially invited teachers, most of the classes are taught by Tong Zhe alone, and even the funds are used from his personal savings.
On Tong Zhe’s personal homepage, there were two such updates. One was at 4:12 in the morning. He said: “After completing the eight new department icons, you can sleep. Good night.” Only 4 hours later, He landed on the homepage again to post a good morning greeting. Then Tong Zhe, who only slept for 4 hours, recorded a 7-hour video class: Thermodynamics and Statistical Physics.
Tong Zhe said that at that time he often recorded lessons in the bedroom, teaching French in the master bedroom and physics in the second bedroom.
After the hard work in the initial period, Wanmen University had four courses: university, middle school, language and dessert by October 2014. The Italian was recorded by the teacher of BFSU. The lecturer of abstract algebra was a PhD student at Yale. It is a professional recording hall with projectors, cameras and green screens. At this time, Wanmen University has issued student ID cards for 100,000 students. At its peak, there were more than 500 teachers on the Wanmen University platform and more than 13 million registered students.
However, Wanmen University has been facing a shortage of funds. In order to find a stable source of funds, Wanmen University has begun to lay out majors in a large area, offering courses such as economics and finance, the Internet, minor languages, and even technical training in higher vocational schools, but the teaching content has also begun. It has become a “hodgepodge” of uneven quality, and the reputation of teaching is greatly reduced.
Cut off the offline get out of class and go the wrong way of marketing
After the offline failure, Wanmen University cut all offline courses and fully entered online video courses.
On January 17, 2014, the independent website of Wanmen University was launched. At this time, although Wanmen University’s courses are charged at 20%, a lifetime VIP mechanism has also been introduced.
By 2018, Wanmen University had opened more than 600 offline direct-sale stores in more than 30 cities across the country, and also opened Wanmen Middle School, Wanmen University, The three sub-brands of Wanmen Primary School have increased from more than 300 employees to more than 3,000 in 2020.
According to public information, in 2019, the “Lifetime VIP” of Shiwanmen University is priced at 9,999 yuan, and can study all courses on the platform at any time. For a time, many old fans paid money to join the group, VIP students quickly exceeded 10,000, and the revenue of VIP alone was as high as 150 million yuan.
In 2019, through the course agency method, the sales staff of Wanmen University persuaded college students to buy tens of thousands of “lifetime VIP” through Huabei, Jingdong Baitiao, etc., and an agent can get a cut of more than 7,600 yuan.
In October 2021, Wanmen also launched the “Scholarship Program” activity, claiming that members can join the scholarship class as long as they pay 10,000 to 15,000 yuan, and after the account has accumulated 3,600 hours of class viewing, all can be returned. tuition fee.
As of March this year, Wanmen Education has had more than 31,785 lifetime VIPs. Based on the average price of 17,000 yuan per member, the amount involved in Wanmen Education alone is at least 540 million yuan for the lifetime VIP business.
(Editor in charge: He Yating)
URL of this article: https://www.ntdtv.com/gb/2022/03/27/a103385197.html