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China bans for-profit school tutoring in sweeping overhaul

240 points by hhs 5y ago

christophilus 5y ago
I don’t invest in Chinese stocks, but I follow a guy who does. His basket of Chinese education stocks plummeted something like 75% on Friday, I think. I guess this is why. Pretty wild.
- yellow_lead 5y ago
  According to all the native Chinese I've spoken to, investing in the Chinese stock market is generally a bad idea. They say it is filled with scams, probably due to lack of regulation or corruption. The government's brazen ability to delete whole industries may be another deterrence though.
  - fma 5y ago
    There's a difference between investing in the Chinese stock market vs investing in a Chinese company listed in the US stock market as an ADR. An ADR usually goes through more vetting - but that doesn't mean there are not scams. Luckin Coffee comes to mind...but in the US we also have Enron.
    - shoo 5y ago
      For a different (no doubt biased) perspective, see how Chinese companies listed on US stock exchanges are perceived by many US short sellers. One sentiment I have heard from US short sellers is that if Chinese companies defraud US investors, Chinese market regulators don't care and US market regulators can't enforce anything even if they are forced to care. But if Chinese companies defraud domestic Chinese investors, then Chinese regulators may react strongly to take action against the offending companies or executives [1]. There are also complications with how Chinese firms listed on US stock exchanges are audited. Francine McKenna writes a lot about complications with audit (not specifically about ADRs) at her newsletter https://thedig.substack.com/ https://thedig.substack.com/ There are some interesting perspectives in the wolfpack research podcast -- esp e.g. episode 3 & episode 8: https://wolfpackresearch.com/podcast/ https://wolfpackresearch.com/podcast/ [1] there is an anecdote about one company that was selling shares to both US investors and their elderly Chinese employees without telling each group that shares in the company were also being sold to the other group, i.e. so both groups of investors were being lied to about the total amount of shares outstanding -- apparently one of the directors responsible for the fraud was taken out and shot.
  - wise_young_man 5y ago
    TAL, mentioned in the article, is listed in the US stock market, NYSE specifically.
    - yellow_lead 5y ago
      Yes
  - nomay 5y ago
    Anything requiring advanced cooperation, especially from the gov, is doomed to fail in China, the system has no check and balance, anyone is looking to monetize their authority, the stock market literally was set up coz SOEs needed to offload their junk assets, it was not meant to be seriously policed from the very start.
  - seanmcdirmid 5y ago
    You can invest in the Chinese stock market and make money, but it is generally by “following in the wake of whales”, who have the real inside information and connections to make the real money. Also, China doesn’t tax capital gains, so the dynamics for making money are really different than in the states.
mensetmanusman 5y ago
“ Once regarded as a sure-fire way for aspiring children (and parents) to get ahead, after-school tutoring is now viewed as an impediment to one of Xi Jinping’s top priorities: boosting a declining birth rate.” At first I thought this was the typical “let’s be equal by slowing down over-achievers,” as we see this more and more in the west as well. It’s crazy to me that this ‘after school study’ was identified as a major reason for declining birth rates, as if decades of policy and the ensuing culture could turn on a dime and the government could ramp womb production by 250% from the party offices.
- Aperocky 5y ago
  An $100B sector purely to 'prepare' students for college entrance examination. The admission numbers are not changing because of tutoring, so all of it was zero sum game waste. And a huge burden on parents and children themselves.
  - legolas2412 5y ago
    > The admission numbers are not changing because of tutoring Why is that the only metric? Why not average learning level? Or the average interest in science? Or the number of grad school applicants? I ask this because i have trouble seeing extra time spent in education as zero sum wastage.
    - justicezyx 5y ago
      Gaokao tests are mostly fixed subjects. Therefore tutoring focus on how to answer and solve questions that ultimately drive from some common knowledge. It's like to learn how to describe the same thing with many different methods. Sure, it's not entirely a waste time that the tutoring can teach some interesting aspects. But at the end of the day, it does not teach anything that was not already covered in the school teaching. And we all know that Chinese students in US tend to limit their thinking in narrow scope. Then why not let the students to absorb non curriculum staff outside of the class, therefore eliminating most of the tutoring.
    - 5y ago
teslafire124 5y ago
It's going to be interesting to see the outcome of this in China. For-profit tutoring (and schooling) have been so prevalent in the US in the last decade and it would provide evidence on if curbing it would help students on a universal level. Please note that I am NOT saying that the US should ban it like China because that would be authoritarian obviously. I am thinking more along the lines of giving more equity to students who can't afford for-profit tutoring.
- Barrin92 5y ago
  > Please note that I am NOT saying that the US should ban it like China because that would be authoritarian obviously Wouldn't be so quick with that label. The German basic law plainly states "Preparatory schools shall remain abolished", with the straight forward justification that education is a universal human right, should be equally accessible to all, and there should be no privilege that funnels upper-class kids through the school system. (Which was the primary reason for the existence of the so-called Vorschule, before 1919). Abolishing these kinds of systems and banning them seems honestly right to me and meritocratic.
  - galaxyLogic 5y ago
    I can see the point but I don't quite buy it. A better way to decrease inequality would seem to me progressive taxation whose proceeds can be used to provide high-quality education to anybody who wants it and is capable of studying hard. In market economy teaching is a commodity so those who are capable of providing better quality education should be rewarded for it. That should be regulated however, so we really know who is providing better quality education.
    - sudosysgen 5y ago
      The thing is that this is a zero-sum game. These schools aren't providing education. It's not about actually improving yourself. It's about getting the highest possible score on the gaokao, nothing else at all. If they were actually helping students further their education I'd agree with you. I've been to these kinds of schools and I have friends who did for even longer, and they really, really suck. It doesn't help you in any way, I'd say it's a net negative in terms of education for most.
daxfohl 5y ago
Of all the things to blackmarket....
- Animats 5y ago
  "Hey, kid, wanna see a calculus textbook?"
MattGaiser 5y ago
Doesn't this just ban for profit tutoring companies and make the system reliant on finding tutors by word of mouth? This seems similar to universities eliminating the SAT. They aren't doing away with competitive admissions so the reasons for doing it remain intact, just making the rules muddy, unclear, and only known by select people.
hintymad 5y ago
China has the opposite problem of the US: too much pressure on kids in school. Elementary school student have hours of homework every day. They have to learn competitive maths and brain teasers in the tutoring schools too. Ironically, all their effort is in vain because all the tricks they learn in elementary school will be useless once they grasp high school math. The reason is simple: 50% of the middle school students won't pass the high school entrance exam and therefore have to go to vocational schools. Therefore, parents try every way possible to send their kids to elite middle schools so they can get the best training by the best teachers. There is also a secondary reason: Chinese high schools teach too little. For instance, high school maths do not cover calculus or linear algebra. In the meantime, only 50% or so high school students could get into university, and about 1% will get into the elite ones (search 985 universities, if you will). Naturally, problems in the National College Entrance Exam become tricky instead of deep. To be honest, they are not that tricky for mathematically inclined, but they are tricky enough for the general public. As a result, students go to tutoring schools to learn how to solve all kinds of hard problems, which again, are not hard any more if they learn more advanced concepts in college. Case in point, the most challenging problems are usually about analytical geometry, which US does not even teach because calculus and linear algebra render this 19th-century subject in a way obsolete.
- sudosysgen 5y ago
  In Québec we learn analytical geometry, it was actually tremendously helpful for me to excel at Calculus and Linear Algebra. I don't really think it's obsolete.
  - nick__m 5y ago
    I have always wondered about the causes behind Québec's anormaly high PISA score in mathematic¹ and I think that your annecdote is probably highlighting of of them. 1- Table 1 and 2 of that document: https://www.fraserinstitute.org/sites/default/files/math-performance-in-canada.pdf https://www.fraserinstitute.org/sites/default/files/math-per...
- villasv 5y ago
  > problems in the National College Entrance Exam become tricky instead of deep I assume that is because entrance exams are forced not to cover material outside the national high school subjects? Brazil’s hardest entrance exams (ITA and IME) are not bound in any way, so they go arbitrarily deep.
Shadonototro 5y ago
China is miles ahead of the west, it's crazy, people over here, specially on hacker news are obsessed with their stocks You guys are disconnected from the reality, you represent exactly what's wrong in the west
moltar 5y ago
I imagine this will simply shift online to outside of China. Bonus if tutor speaks English. You can kill two birds with one stone.
- mylons 5y ago
  isn’t the great firewall preventing this?
atomicity 5y ago
Is China doing anything so that it's worthwhile for students to learn practical skills rather than focus on getting into a college? It's harder to get society to value college degrees less, but I don't see much changing unless there are many stable, low/medium-risk business opportunities available to those with degrees from lower-ranked schools. It feels like they are just addressing a symptom, and not trying to tackle the larger issue...so I'm curious why they would do that
- markus_zhang 5y ago
  You have to understand the mindset of Chinese. Although a few decades into the industrial society and with the purge of traditional mindsets during the Cultural Revolution, they are not easy to be removed. The old saying is 万般只有读书高, which basically translates to "Read books and pass your exams and you are going to have a bright future". This reflects the fact that ancient Chinese needed to pass some state exams to be selected as officials. In ancient Chinese (and today still in some parts of China), being "in the bureaucratic system" is the best thing. Practically skills were looked down (I actually think it was a lot better back in the 50s~80s when people with practical skills were more or less not looked down, but things started to come back in recent decades), Merchants were looked down (but nowadays they enjoy higher status thanks to Capitalism). As a matter of fact, schools that teach practical skills (技校) are looked down and it's a lot easier to get into than the universities. It's definitely not black and white nowadays (after all we went through a few revolutions in the last century), but the mindset is still there IMHO. It's just buried deep. I'd actually argue that the same mindset can be found in American parents too (Do you want to do X in the future like BoB?) You are 100% right about just addressing the symptom and that's the what Humphreys do best.
  - malandrew 5y ago
    It's not just a mindset that has been passed on but a mindset that is caused by circumstance. I used to teach in China and one of the things I noticed that doesn't get attention is the impact of the one-child policy on that one child. You had a largely socialist system that turned largely capitalist so you have all these parents nearing the end of their careers without much to show for it (because they grew up in a largely socialist system) and their main shot at a better life is a single child that they expect to support them beyond what the state provides as they age. This is a recipe for a ridiculous amount of pressure parents put on their single child, and that single child is aware that they have the future burden of supporting two parents in the future. It was really enlightening to witness these consequences first hand.
fma 5y ago
In other news...demand for private tutoring goes up.
markus_zhang 5y ago
As a Chinese I can elaborate a bit more about the logic: 1. Middle income parents don't want children to fall down from the social ladder. 2. Education is still their best bet. Well you definitely have better tools but they don't have access to them (easily). 3. When everyone is competing for better education, it becomes an arms race, with people throwing in literally millions of bucks for 1) (学区房) Apartments that are in good school districts. The usual trick is to purchase a very small apartment (may still cost some 2-3 million USD in Beijing for example for a something like a 20 m^2 one). One recent policy (before this one) is to completely remove those districts and randomly pick schools for the kids (I think it's still based on geography but a larger one) 2) For-profit school (what this news is about). Parents are willing to pay good teachers some 150-200 USD per hour for these schools. Since most For-profit schools just hire the best teachers of the public schools this poses a couple of major issues: A) Teachers are inclined to make as little effort in public education as possible, and B) It poses a tremendous pressure on the parents and the kids, monetary and psychological. Some kids literally burn candle every day, 7/24. Now you combine all these and no wonder those kids will NEVER want to give birth to their own kids and go over the hell again. But I don't think these policies will work. The policy-makers are just cutting off the shaft and ignoring the arrow. You see, the competition is still there, and even more because parents have to figure out new ways to join the arms race, which guarantee that they will waste a lot of money trying new things. I figured the whole bureacratics probably received some order from high-up, maybe Xi himself, but chose to do lip service instead of spending real money. One golden rule about government policy (to tell if it's real or not) is to see whether they are going to spend money on it.
- deleted 5y ago
  [deleted]
- Aperocky 5y ago
  I'm more optimistic. I think it's going to work if simply because the ban on advertisement for tutoring. Advertisement works and it opens up new market segments that previously are not interested in these things, and in a resource constrained environment (as in the admissions are more or less constant), it forces everyone to act. That and the almost complete bulldozing of the current tutoring infrastructure are going to leave that space blank for a good while - hopefully to some better childhoods at least in the near terms. It's never about changing it for everyone, if it works on enough families, most families, or even some families, that were previously going to impose that insane tutoring on their kids, then it's worked in the right direction. Personally, I think this obsession is illogical, a better major is a far better indicator of success than the differences in college a few points of Gaokao are going to make.
ransom1538 5y ago
Almost all the information kids are cramming is useless to their future. So, these poor kids study 24/7 useless information in hopes of what? The odds are they will know exactly what all the other kids know -- making it even more useless to future employers.
- frankbreetz 5y ago
  In this day and age largely what you should be learning in high school and before is "learning how to learn". You will probably never need to know that the mitochondria is the power house of the cell, but if you can learn things quickly, you will be more likely to have a successful career.
ergocoder 5y ago
This is going to backfire. It will disincentive regular schools even more to be decent because students will have absolutely no alternatives. Back in my country (not China) when I was young, these for-profit schools were 10x more competent than any normal school. Because they were not mandatory and had competition. Also, I have no idea what specifics are, but forbidding people teaching math and collecting money is going to be tricky.
daxfohl 5y ago
If the economy is struggling such that spending your life savings on cram schools is the only way for your children to have a decent career, why does China suddenly want more children? Won't that just make things even worse?
- atatatat 5y ago
  > why does China suddenly want more children? Body count is important.
  - Ericson2314 5y ago
    We can all suppot aging populations, but that would give workers more power. If you believe in Keynesianism, exports are hardly needed for a baseline-mostly-closed economy because can boost demand locally. (Tech transfer is another thing, granted.) But it you want to get your elites rich and keep your workers in check, export all the stuff so living standards don't rise so much with the extra work.
throwawaysea 5y ago
Private education is a way for parents to retain control over the curriculum their children are exposed to and a way to give their children more/better options than the "one size fits all" low bar for education typically offered by public schooling. In America, I think increased school choice and the ability to spend tax vouchers wherever you want, choosing between many competing providers, is the inevitable future that the current incumbent system is trying to prevent. As for China, as an outsider, I can't help but look at these regulations as a way to wrangle control over education since education is a key tool of indoctrination for authoritarian governments. See this excerpt from the article: > Among other things, they also ban the teaching of foreign curriculums, tighten scrutiny over the import of textbooks and forbid the hiring of foreign teachers outside of China -- a curb that could have severe consequences for startups like VIPKid that specialize in overseas tutors. The government also ordered local authorities to tighten approvals for companies providing training on extra-curriculum subjects.
- throwawayboise 5y ago
  A friend of mine tutors Chinese kids in English with VIPKid. It's kind of like Uber/gig work for tutors. You take the work as you have time for it. Some of them make decent side money doing this.
100-xyz 5y ago
I see decent bit of parallels with such cram schools and Leetcoding for FAANG applications. I just completed a final interview round for Google and went through 300+ problems on LC. It improved my test taking ability a lot, but in the actual job will be completely useless. Similar to the Chinese children, this artificial testing is getting more and more competitive. Just wanted to bring it up.
- yzmtf2008 5y ago
  In my experience, doing leetcode to such an extent is in general useless for job searches. Companies are not stupid, and your ability in solving the technical problem is only a very small part of the interview rubric. I’ve done 5, maybe 10 leetcode problems and never had an issue interviewing.
  - mianos 5y ago
    It may be only a very small part but not knowing how to invert a binary tree may well knock you out of the process. The process is designed to cull as many people as possible as early in the process as possible. It is accepted they might miss a few good people but it is more important that don't hire a bad one.
    - hintymad 5y ago
      You don’t need leetcode to know how to invert a binary tree. You need solid foundation on algorithm and data structure, both of which are still relevant today.
      - durovo 5y ago
        I find it funny how inverting a binary tree is used as an example of a bad leetcode problem. This problem seems more like a fizzbuzz test, anyone who knows recursion should be able to solve it on their own.
        5y ago
Clewza313 5y ago
Korea has been going through a very similar struggle regarding its cram schools, with regulations on maximum fees, allowed times etc being imposed, and both parents and cram schools developing elaborate subterfuges to work around them: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hagwon#Regulation https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hagwon#Regulation Until the underlying incentives (= having a single exam basically decide your life) are fixed, this move in China seems equally likely to be ineffective.
sprusemoose 5y ago
This is more about curbing western ideology Private English tuition is/was? the bedrock of western values in China. It's where mundane, textbook, multi-choice English taught in schools gets emotional cadence, individualism, expression and creativity. The govt wants English to be computer code as it's taught in public schools.
aero-glide2 5y ago
I hope India regulates entities like Byjus. Every government should have khan-academy like videos made by the best teachers available to all citizens for free.
- xNeil 5y ago
  Check out NPTEL - it's Khan Academy, but by the government. Don't know about other streams, but for Engineering, it has IIT Professors teaching the lectures.
- blueblisters 5y ago
  I have seen some Byju's math videos on YouTube. Honestly, they are fairly good quality and the teachers seem to be quite engaging. Of course, they are not complete courses - for that you probably need to sign up for Byju's.
aaron695 5y ago
The actual release - http://www.gov.cn/zhengce/2021-07/24/content_5627132.htm http://www.gov.cn/zhengce/2021-07/24/content_5627132.htm (English version is heavily condensed, dated incorrect? - http://en.moe.gov.cn/documents/laws_policies/202105/t20210518_532063.html http://en.moe.gov.cn/documents/laws_policies/202105/t2021051... ) By far their biggest threat is students studying at foreign universities. I would have thought this is the number one issue to address, perhaps they can't yet.
deleted 5y ago
[deleted]
jpmoral 5y ago
I once spent a couple of months teaching at a for-profit tutoring centre (not in China). These were 'review' classes teaching tips and tricks to help students do well on university entrance exams. I felt dirty doing it as the only students who could afford to attend were from well-off families, and I felt that the (albeit probably small) edge gained by these students might mean someone else more deserving would not be offered a uni placement.
gigatexal 5y ago
My wife teaches on VIPkid so this sucks: “ Among other things, they also ban the teaching of foreign curriculums, tighten scrutiny over the import of textbooks and forbid the hiring of foreign teachers outside of China -- a curb that could have severe consequences for startups like VIPKid that specialize in overseas tutors. The government also ordered local authorities to tighten approvals for companies providing training on extra-curricul Read more at: https://www.bloombergquint.com/markets/china-bans-school-curriculum-tutoring-firms-from-going-public https://www.bloombergquint.com/markets/china-bans-school-cur... Copyright © BloombergQuint”
ellen364 5y ago
There have been warning shots over the years, but I didn’t expect the Chinese government to act this strongly on tuition. A couple of years ago I worked at a small education technology company. One of the things we did was help tuition companies hire native English speakers, mostly based in the US, who would teach English to Chinese kids via various online platforms. At one point the Chinese government restricted how much money the tuition companies could demand upfront. (I believe some of them were making parents pay 6+ months tuition at a time.) Then there was a qualifications crackdown, with the government getting fussier about the qualifications held by the foreign tutors and talking about some kind of registration process. At the time it seemed obvious that the government wanted tighter control over the tuition companies. But a total ban on that style of tuition (from non-Chinese tutors living outside China) is still a surprise.
- joejoewang 5y ago
  you are right, the business could still make money, but it will be harder to grow to go public (in China). So it would be a grey area for a long time.
PicassoCTs 5y ago
China is currently running out of blue-collar workers. All those one-child-kids have too support two aging parents, and that is only possible on a white-collar income. So nobody volunteers for factory work anymore. The party, hamfisted as it is, tried to force people back into the factories, by devaluing their degrees. Which then leads to - very reasonable protests- which are curbed in a unreasonable manner. https://www.bbc.com/news/world-asia-china-57409218 https://www.bbc.com/news/world-asia-china-57409218 This lack of blue-collar workers, and this water-head of white-collar workers (which is west-typical) and the economic desperation it creates, is also a driving force behind the uighur forced-factory-labour camps.
jasd 5y ago
As others have mentioned, after school coaching is a big thing in India. We had a teacher who would hardly show up for class and when he would, he would move ridiculously slow. By the end of the semester/year he wouldn't have completed even half of the syllabus. He had a coaching class that was popular among students from our school and he would have them pitch the class to other students. It was also pretty common for students of his coaching class to know what to focus on and what questions to expect in the exam. Back in the day while I still knew some folks who would not pay for these after school coaching classes, it looks like now it's uncommon for middle class kids to not have atleast a few of these to go to after school.
yangff 5y ago
1. The total amount of knowledge within primary education is limited. 2. Tutoring schools are not extending students knowledge, it simply intensify the competition by giving students extra pratices and instruction so they can make money from it. 3. Students are not benefit from it, as theirs absolute ranking stay unchanged, if not decrease because their family cannot afford tutoring. 4. Will it immediately alleviates the pressure and anxiety for parents? No, as long as the supply of desired works limited. And the overall social efficiency unchanged. But it does try to solve the immediate problem of out of control involution in the competition and maybe do some good for students.

240 points by hhs 5y ago

I don’t invest in Chinese stocks, but I follow a guy who does. His basket of Chinese education stocks plummeted something like 75% on Friday, I think. I guess this is why. Pretty wild.

yellow_lead 5y ago
According to all the native Chinese I've spoken to, investing in the Chinese stock market is generally a bad idea. They say it is filled with scams, probably due to lack of regulation or corruption. The government's brazen ability to delete whole industries may be another deterrence though.
- fma 5y ago
  There's a difference between investing in the Chinese stock market vs investing in a Chinese company listed in the US stock market as an ADR. An ADR usually goes through more vetting - but that doesn't mean there are not scams. Luckin Coffee comes to mind...but in the US we also have Enron.
  - shoo 5y ago
    For a different (no doubt biased) perspective, see how Chinese companies listed on US stock exchanges are perceived by many US short sellers. One sentiment I have heard from US short sellers is that if Chinese companies defraud US investors, Chinese market regulators don't care and US market regulators can't enforce anything even if they are forced to care. But if Chinese companies defraud domestic Chinese investors, then Chinese regulators may react strongly to take action against the offending companies or executives [1]. There are also complications with how Chinese firms listed on US stock exchanges are audited. Francine McKenna writes a lot about complications with audit (not specifically about ADRs) at her newsletter https://thedig.substack.com/ https://thedig.substack.com/ There are some interesting perspectives in the wolfpack research podcast -- esp e.g. episode 3 & episode 8: https://wolfpackresearch.com/podcast/ https://wolfpackresearch.com/podcast/ [1] there is an anecdote about one company that was selling shares to both US investors and their elderly Chinese employees without telling each group that shares in the company were also being sold to the other group, i.e. so both groups of investors were being lied to about the total amount of shares outstanding -- apparently one of the directors responsible for the fraud was taken out and shot.
- wise_young_man 5y ago
  TAL, mentioned in the article, is listed in the US stock market, NYSE specifically.
  - yellow_lead 5y ago
    Yes
- nomay 5y ago
  Anything requiring advanced cooperation, especially from the gov, is doomed to fail in China, the system has no check and balance, anyone is looking to monetize their authority, the stock market literally was set up coz SOEs needed to offload their junk assets, it was not meant to be seriously policed from the very start.
- seanmcdirmid 5y ago
  You can invest in the Chinese stock market and make money, but it is generally by “following in the wake of whales”, who have the real inside information and connections to make the real money. Also, China doesn’t tax capital gains, so the dynamics for making money are really different than in the states.

mensetmanusman 5y ago

“ Once regarded as a sure-fire way for aspiring children (and parents) to get ahead, after-school tutoring is now viewed as an impediment to one of Xi Jinping’s top priorities: boosting a declining birth rate.” At first I thought this was the typical “let’s be equal by slowing down over-achievers,” as we see this more and more in the west as well. It’s crazy to me that this ‘after school study’ was identified as a major reason for declining birth rates, as if decades of policy and the ensuing culture could turn on a dime and the government could ramp womb production by 250% from the party offices.

Aperocky 5y ago
An $100B sector purely to 'prepare' students for college entrance examination. The admission numbers are not changing because of tutoring, so all of it was zero sum game waste. And a huge burden on parents and children themselves.
- legolas2412 5y ago
  > The admission numbers are not changing because of tutoring Why is that the only metric? Why not average learning level? Or the average interest in science? Or the number of grad school applicants? I ask this because i have trouble seeing extra time spent in education as zero sum wastage.
  - justicezyx 5y ago
    Gaokao tests are mostly fixed subjects. Therefore tutoring focus on how to answer and solve questions that ultimately drive from some common knowledge. It's like to learn how to describe the same thing with many different methods. Sure, it's not entirely a waste time that the tutoring can teach some interesting aspects. But at the end of the day, it does not teach anything that was not already covered in the school teaching. And we all know that Chinese students in US tend to limit their thinking in narrow scope. Then why not let the students to absorb non curriculum staff outside of the class, therefore eliminating most of the tutoring.
  - 5y ago

teslafire124 5y ago

It's going to be interesting to see the outcome of this in China. For-profit tutoring (and schooling) have been so prevalent in the US in the last decade and it would provide evidence on if curbing it would help students on a universal level. Please note that I am NOT saying that the US should ban it like China because that would be authoritarian obviously. I am thinking more along the lines of giving more equity to students who can't afford for-profit tutoring.

Barrin92 5y ago
> Please note that I am NOT saying that the US should ban it like China because that would be authoritarian obviously Wouldn't be so quick with that label. The German basic law plainly states "Preparatory schools shall remain abolished", with the straight forward justification that education is a universal human right, should be equally accessible to all, and there should be no privilege that funnels upper-class kids through the school system. (Which was the primary reason for the existence of the so-called Vorschule, before 1919). Abolishing these kinds of systems and banning them seems honestly right to me and meritocratic.
- galaxyLogic 5y ago
  I can see the point but I don't quite buy it. A better way to decrease inequality would seem to me progressive taxation whose proceeds can be used to provide high-quality education to anybody who wants it and is capable of studying hard. In market economy teaching is a commodity so those who are capable of providing better quality education should be rewarded for it. That should be regulated however, so we really know who is providing better quality education.
  - sudosysgen 5y ago
    The thing is that this is a zero-sum game. These schools aren't providing education. It's not about actually improving yourself. It's about getting the highest possible score on the gaokao, nothing else at all. If they were actually helping students further their education I'd agree with you. I've been to these kinds of schools and I have friends who did for even longer, and they really, really suck. It doesn't help you in any way, I'd say it's a net negative in terms of education for most.

daxfohl 5y ago

Of all the things to blackmarket....

Animats 5y ago
"Hey, kid, wanna see a calculus textbook?"

MattGaiser 5y ago

Doesn't this just ban for profit tutoring companies and make the system reliant on finding tutors by word of mouth? This seems similar to universities eliminating the SAT. They aren't doing away with competitive admissions so the reasons for doing it remain intact, just making the rules muddy, unclear, and only known by select people.

hintymad 5y ago

China has the opposite problem of the US: too much pressure on kids in school. Elementary school student have hours of homework every day. They have to learn competitive maths and brain teasers in the tutoring schools too. Ironically, all their effort is in vain because all the tricks they learn in elementary school will be useless once they grasp high school math. The reason is simple: 50% of the middle school students won't pass the high school entrance exam and therefore have to go to vocational schools. Therefore, parents try every way possible to send their kids to elite middle schools so they can get the best training by the best teachers. There is also a secondary reason: Chinese high schools teach too little. For instance, high school maths do not cover calculus or linear algebra. In the meantime, only 50% or so high school students could get into university, and about 1% will get into the elite ones (search 985 universities, if you will). Naturally, problems in the National College Entrance Exam become tricky instead of deep. To be honest, they are not that tricky for mathematically inclined, but they are tricky enough for the general public. As a result, students go to tutoring schools to learn how to solve all kinds of hard problems, which again, are not hard any more if they learn more advanced concepts in college. Case in point, the most challenging problems are usually about analytical geometry, which US does not even teach because calculus and linear algebra render this 19th-century subject in a way obsolete.

sudosysgen 5y ago
In Québec we learn analytical geometry, it was actually tremendously helpful for me to excel at Calculus and Linear Algebra. I don't really think it's obsolete.
- nick__m 5y ago
  I have always wondered about the causes behind Québec's anormaly high PISA score in mathematic¹ and I think that your annecdote is probably highlighting of of them. 1- Table 1 and 2 of that document: https://www.fraserinstitute.org/sites/default/files/math-performance-in-canada.pdf https://www.fraserinstitute.org/sites/default/files/math-per...
villasv 5y ago
> problems in the National College Entrance Exam become tricky instead of deep I assume that is because entrance exams are forced not to cover material outside the national high school subjects? Brazil’s hardest entrance exams (ITA and IME) are not bound in any way, so they go arbitrarily deep.

Shadonototro 5y ago

China is miles ahead of the west, it's crazy, people over here, specially on hacker news are obsessed with their stocks You guys are disconnected from the reality, you represent exactly what's wrong in the west

moltar 5y ago

I imagine this will simply shift online to outside of China. Bonus if tutor speaks English. You can kill two birds with one stone.

mylons 5y ago
isn’t the great firewall preventing this?

atomicity 5y ago

Is China doing anything so that it's worthwhile for students to learn practical skills rather than focus on getting into a college? It's harder to get society to value college degrees less, but I don't see much changing unless there are many stable, low/medium-risk business opportunities available to those with degrees from lower-ranked schools. It feels like they are just addressing a symptom, and not trying to tackle the larger issue...so I'm curious why they would do that

markus_zhang 5y ago
You have to understand the mindset of Chinese. Although a few decades into the industrial society and with the purge of traditional mindsets during the Cultural Revolution, they are not easy to be removed. The old saying is 万般只有读书高, which basically translates to "Read books and pass your exams and you are going to have a bright future". This reflects the fact that ancient Chinese needed to pass some state exams to be selected as officials. In ancient Chinese (and today still in some parts of China), being "in the bureaucratic system" is the best thing. Practically skills were looked down (I actually think it was a lot better back in the 50s~80s when people with practical skills were more or less not looked down, but things started to come back in recent decades), Merchants were looked down (but nowadays they enjoy higher status thanks to Capitalism). As a matter of fact, schools that teach practical skills (技校) are looked down and it's a lot easier to get into than the universities. It's definitely not black and white nowadays (after all we went through a few revolutions in the last century), but the mindset is still there IMHO. It's just buried deep. I'd actually argue that the same mindset can be found in American parents too (Do you want to do X in the future like BoB?) You are 100% right about just addressing the symptom and that's the what Humphreys do best.
- malandrew 5y ago
  It's not just a mindset that has been passed on but a mindset that is caused by circumstance. I used to teach in China and one of the things I noticed that doesn't get attention is the impact of the one-child policy on that one child. You had a largely socialist system that turned largely capitalist so you have all these parents nearing the end of their careers without much to show for it (because they grew up in a largely socialist system) and their main shot at a better life is a single child that they expect to support them beyond what the state provides as they age. This is a recipe for a ridiculous amount of pressure parents put on their single child, and that single child is aware that they have the future burden of supporting two parents in the future. It was really enlightening to witness these consequences first hand.

fma 5y ago

In other news...demand for private tutoring goes up.

markus_zhang 5y ago

As a Chinese I can elaborate a bit more about the logic: 1. Middle income parents don't want children to fall down from the social ladder. 2. Education is still their best bet. Well you definitely have better tools but they don't have access to them (easily). 3. When everyone is competing for better education, it becomes an arms race, with people throwing in literally millions of bucks for 1) (学区房) Apartments that are in good school districts. The usual trick is to purchase a very small apartment (may still cost some 2-3 million USD in Beijing for example for a something like a 20 m^2 one). One recent policy (before this one) is to completely remove those districts and randomly pick schools for the kids (I think it's still based on geography but a larger one) 2) For-profit school (what this news is about). Parents are willing to pay good teachers some 150-200 USD per hour for these schools. Since most For-profit schools just hire the best teachers of the public schools this poses a couple of major issues: A) Teachers are inclined to make as little effort in public education as possible, and B) It poses a tremendous pressure on the parents and the kids, monetary and psychological. Some kids literally burn candle every day, 7/24. Now you combine all these and no wonder those kids will NEVER want to give birth to their own kids and go over the hell again. But I don't think these policies will work. The policy-makers are just cutting off the shaft and ignoring the arrow. You see, the competition is still there, and even more because parents have to figure out new ways to join the arms race, which guarantee that they will waste a lot of money trying new things. I figured the whole bureacratics probably received some order from high-up, maybe Xi himself, but chose to do lip service instead of spending real money. One golden rule about government policy (to tell if it's real or not) is to see whether they are going to spend money on it.

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Aperocky 5y ago
I'm more optimistic. I think it's going to work if simply because the ban on advertisement for tutoring. Advertisement works and it opens up new market segments that previously are not interested in these things, and in a resource constrained environment (as in the admissions are more or less constant), it forces everyone to act. That and the almost complete bulldozing of the current tutoring infrastructure are going to leave that space blank for a good while - hopefully to some better childhoods at least in the near terms. It's never about changing it for everyone, if it works on enough families, most families, or even some families, that were previously going to impose that insane tutoring on their kids, then it's worked in the right direction. Personally, I think this obsession is illogical, a better major is a far better indicator of success than the differences in college a few points of Gaokao are going to make.

ransom1538 5y ago

Almost all the information kids are cramming is useless to their future. So, these poor kids study 24/7 useless information in hopes of what? The odds are they will know exactly what all the other kids know -- making it even more useless to future employers.

frankbreetz 5y ago
In this day and age largely what you should be learning in high school and before is "learning how to learn". You will probably never need to know that the mitochondria is the power house of the cell, but if you can learn things quickly, you will be more likely to have a successful career.

ergocoder 5y ago

This is going to backfire. It will disincentive regular schools even more to be decent because students will have absolutely no alternatives. Back in my country (not China) when I was young, these for-profit schools were 10x more competent than any normal school. Because they were not mandatory and had competition. Also, I have no idea what specifics are, but forbidding people teaching math and collecting money is going to be tricky.

daxfohl 5y ago

If the economy is struggling such that spending your life savings on cram schools is the only way for your children to have a decent career, why does China suddenly want more children? Won't that just make things even worse?

atatatat 5y ago
> why does China suddenly want more children? Body count is important.
- Ericson2314 5y ago
  We can all suppot aging populations, but that would give workers more power. If you believe in Keynesianism, exports are hardly needed for a baseline-mostly-closed economy because can boost demand locally. (Tech transfer is another thing, granted.) But it you want to get your elites rich and keep your workers in check, export all the stuff so living standards don't rise so much with the extra work.

throwawaysea 5y ago

Private education is a way for parents to retain control over the curriculum their children are exposed to and a way to give their children more/better options than the "one size fits all" low bar for education typically offered by public schooling. In America, I think increased school choice and the ability to spend tax vouchers wherever you want, choosing between many competing providers, is the inevitable future that the current incumbent system is trying to prevent. As for China, as an outsider, I can't help but look at these regulations as a way to wrangle control over education since education is a key tool of indoctrination for authoritarian governments. See this excerpt from the article: > Among other things, they also ban the teaching of foreign curriculums, tighten scrutiny over the import of textbooks and forbid the hiring of foreign teachers outside of China -- a curb that could have severe consequences for startups like VIPKid that specialize in overseas tutors. The government also ordered local authorities to tighten approvals for companies providing training on extra-curriculum subjects.

throwawayboise 5y ago
A friend of mine tutors Chinese kids in English with VIPKid. It's kind of like Uber/gig work for tutors. You take the work as you have time for it. Some of them make decent side money doing this.

100-xyz 5y ago

I see decent bit of parallels with such cram schools and Leetcoding for FAANG applications. I just completed a final interview round for Google and went through 300+ problems on LC. It improved my test taking ability a lot, but in the actual job will be completely useless. Similar to the Chinese children, this artificial testing is getting more and more competitive. Just wanted to bring it up.

yzmtf2008 5y ago
In my experience, doing leetcode to such an extent is in general useless for job searches. Companies are not stupid, and your ability in solving the technical problem is only a very small part of the interview rubric. I’ve done 5, maybe 10 leetcode problems and never had an issue interviewing.
- mianos 5y ago
  It may be only a very small part but not knowing how to invert a binary tree may well knock you out of the process. The process is designed to cull as many people as possible as early in the process as possible. It is accepted they might miss a few good people but it is more important that don't hire a bad one.
  - hintymad 5y ago
    You don’t need leetcode to know how to invert a binary tree. You need solid foundation on algorithm and data structure, both of which are still relevant today.
    - durovo 5y ago
      I find it funny how inverting a binary tree is used as an example of a bad leetcode problem. This problem seems more like a fizzbuzz test, anyone who knows recursion should be able to solve it on their own.
      - 5y ago

Clewza313 5y ago

Korea has been going through a very similar struggle regarding its cram schools, with regulations on maximum fees, allowed times etc being imposed, and both parents and cram schools developing elaborate subterfuges to work around them: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hagwon#Regulation https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hagwon#Regulation Until the underlying incentives (= having a single exam basically decide your life) are fixed, this move in China seems equally likely to be ineffective.

sprusemoose 5y ago

This is more about curbing western ideology Private English tuition is/was? the bedrock of western values in China. It's where mundane, textbook, multi-choice English taught in schools gets emotional cadence, individualism, expression and creativity. The govt wants English to be computer code as it's taught in public schools.

aero-glide2 5y ago

I hope India regulates entities like Byjus. Every government should have khan-academy like videos made by the best teachers available to all citizens for free.

xNeil 5y ago
Check out NPTEL - it's Khan Academy, but by the government. Don't know about other streams, but for Engineering, it has IIT Professors teaching the lectures.
blueblisters 5y ago
I have seen some Byju's math videos on YouTube. Honestly, they are fairly good quality and the teachers seem to be quite engaging. Of course, they are not complete courses - for that you probably need to sign up for Byju's.

aaron695 5y ago

The actual release - http://www.gov.cn/zhengce/2021-07/24/content_5627132.htm http://www.gov.cn/zhengce/2021-07/24/content_5627132.htm (English version is heavily condensed, dated incorrect? - http://en.moe.gov.cn/documents/laws_policies/202105/t20210518_532063.html http://en.moe.gov.cn/documents/laws_policies/202105/t2021051... ) By far their biggest threat is students studying at foreign universities. I would have thought this is the number one issue to address, perhaps they can't yet.

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jpmoral 5y ago

I once spent a couple of months teaching at a for-profit tutoring centre (not in China). These were 'review' classes teaching tips and tricks to help students do well on university entrance exams. I felt dirty doing it as the only students who could afford to attend were from well-off families, and I felt that the (albeit probably small) edge gained by these students might mean someone else more deserving would not be offered a uni placement.

gigatexal 5y ago

My wife teaches on VIPkid so this sucks: “ Among other things, they also ban the teaching of foreign curriculums, tighten scrutiny over the import of textbooks and forbid the hiring of foreign teachers outside of China -- a curb that could have severe consequences for startups like VIPKid that specialize in overseas tutors. The government also ordered local authorities to tighten approvals for companies providing training on extra-curricul Read more at: https://www.bloombergquint.com/markets/china-bans-school-curriculum-tutoring-firms-from-going-public https://www.bloombergquint.com/markets/china-bans-school-cur... Copyright © BloombergQuint”

ellen364 5y ago

There have been warning shots over the years, but I didn’t expect the Chinese government to act this strongly on tuition. A couple of years ago I worked at a small education technology company. One of the things we did was help tuition companies hire native English speakers, mostly based in the US, who would teach English to Chinese kids via various online platforms. At one point the Chinese government restricted how much money the tuition companies could demand upfront. (I believe some of them were making parents pay 6+ months tuition at a time.) Then there was a qualifications crackdown, with the government getting fussier about the qualifications held by the foreign tutors and talking about some kind of registration process. At the time it seemed obvious that the government wanted tighter control over the tuition companies. But a total ban on that style of tuition (from non-Chinese tutors living outside China) is still a surprise.

joejoewang 5y ago
you are right, the business could still make money, but it will be harder to grow to go public (in China). So it would be a grey area for a long time.

PicassoCTs 5y ago

China is currently running out of blue-collar workers. All those one-child-kids have too support two aging parents, and that is only possible on a white-collar income. So nobody volunteers for factory work anymore. The party, hamfisted as it is, tried to force people back into the factories, by devaluing their degrees. Which then leads to - very reasonable protests- which are curbed in a unreasonable manner. https://www.bbc.com/news/world-asia-china-57409218 https://www.bbc.com/news/world-asia-china-57409218 This lack of blue-collar workers, and this water-head of white-collar workers (which is west-typical) and the economic desperation it creates, is also a driving force behind the uighur forced-factory-labour camps.

jasd 5y ago

As others have mentioned, after school coaching is a big thing in India. We had a teacher who would hardly show up for class and when he would, he would move ridiculously slow. By the end of the semester/year he wouldn't have completed even half of the syllabus. He had a coaching class that was popular among students from our school and he would have them pitch the class to other students. It was also pretty common for students of his coaching class to know what to focus on and what questions to expect in the exam. Back in the day while I still knew some folks who would not pay for these after school coaching classes, it looks like now it's uncommon for middle class kids to not have atleast a few of these to go to after school.

yangff 5y ago

1. The total amount of knowledge within primary education is limited. 2. Tutoring schools are not extending students knowledge, it simply intensify the competition by giving students extra pratices and instruction so they can make money from it. 3. Students are not benefit from it, as theirs absolute ranking stay unchanged, if not decrease because their family cannot afford tutoring. 4. Will it immediately alleviates the pressure and anxiety for parents? No, as long as the supply of desired works limited. And the overall social efficiency unchanged. But it does try to solve the immediate problem of out of control involution in the competition and maybe do some good for students.