text/Jincuodao Channel
pictures/Visual China
One day in 2017, Lei Jun , Wang Xing, Li Yanhong , Zhang Chaoyang was gathered together by a young man and discussed his life ideals for 3 hours.
This young man was the first online education institution in China, ", "0,000 universities ".
Since 2013, Wanmen University has been touring lectures in major universities across the country. The theme of the speech at Nankai University is "Online education will surely change China profoundly."
Like today's internet celebrity bloggers, Tong Zhe gave lectures by himself, recorded, edited, published and operated by himself, and was the "great god" in the eyes of college top students.
0,000 universities are also a magic tool for many college students to prepare for the exam.
But just yesterday, Tong Zhe's fans panicked.
They found that "when they woke up early in the morning, they were moved out of the student VIP group, and the app under Wanmen Education could not log in."
Even Tong Zhe's WeChat avatar and nickname were changed.
As of the afternoon of March 22, 3,014 students have registered to protect their rights.
Why did Wanmen University, which was once popular all over the country, fail so badly?
" Online University " in the bedroom,
sold classes to attract 13 million fans
In 2012, online education abroad was in full swing. Tong Zhe, a second-year master's degree in
, hopes to follow the foreign model and be his own learning platform and record "Azhe's Physics Class" in the dormitory of Paris Higher Normal University .
His little class became popular as soon as it was launched. On platforms such as Youku and Renren, there are more than 30,000 clicks in each section.
7 months later, Tong Zhe bought tickets on his parents and flew back to China, founded "Wanmen University", and also changed the personality signature : Struggle and unemployed young people.
He said: "I founded Wanmen, just hope to give others a chance to learn."
Since March 2013, Wanmen University has begun to hold exchanges and sharing sessions in major universities, conducting online classes, and conducting club activities and small classes offline.
Tong Zhe completed tour speeches of more than 30 universities within one month, and the number of attention on Renren's homepage exceeded 70,000, and its public homepages of more than 50 branches and departments were established.
lectures were the greatest competitiveness of Wanmen University at that time.
1. Do the best course, establish the "powerful" personality
0,000 important courses in universities, and is the " Theoretical Physics Special Training Class" in July 2013.
Tong Zhe called this cram school: "The highest-end cram school in China's folk training industry."
How hardcore is this course? According to Tong Zhe himself, "A month of class, you can survive or die."
? It includes but is not limited to: advanced mathematics , probability statistics, quantum mechanics , quantum field theory, relativity , string theory ...
34 days, including 28 days full-day courses, and 7 2-hour physics lectures. After the special training of
, 12 students of this course became comrades-in-arms, and the course videos were also uploaded to the Internet, becoming a milestone part of Wanmen University.
can gather the top students with the most hard-core courses, and the powerful people of Wanmen University have been set up steadily.
Tong Zhe is also full of hope for the future and has devoted twelve of energy to the management of Wanmen University.
2. Only sleep for 4 hours a day, and you can record classes in the bedroom
. The first-time Wanmen University has only a few staff members. In addition to the specially invited teachers, most of the classes are taught by him alone, and even the funds are based on his personal savings.
Because of lack of money, Wanmen University wrote APP code in a residential building at that time. Tong Zhe said: "That year we wore slippers to work, taught French in the main bedroom, and taught physics in the second bedroom."
Image source: President Tong Zhe Weibo
On Tong Zhe's personal homepage, there were two such dynamics, one was at 4:12 am. He said: "After finishing eight new department icons, you can sleep. Good night." Only 4 hours later, he logged into the homepage again to post good morning greetings.
Tong Zhe, who only sleeps for 4 hours a day, has to face a 7-hour video class during the day: Thermodynamics and Statistical Physics.
Hard work pays off.
4 From October 2014, there were already four courses on the website of Wanmen University, including university, middle school, language and dessert. Italian was recorded by a teacher from Beijing Foreign Studies University, and the speaker of Abstract Algebra is a doctoral degree from Yale .
class location has also changed from a private house to a professional recording room with projectors, cameras and green screens.
Between 2013 and October 2014, Wanmen University issued "student certificates" to 100,000 students, and Tong Zhe was also known as the "President".
At its peak, there were more than 500 teachers on the Wanmen University platform and more than 13 million registered students.
Wanmen University, which ran away overnight,
, even the founder's education was mixed with fake
, and Wanmen University, which has an unlimited popularity, has always faced the problem of funding shortage. Tong Zhe, the founder of
, also knows that using personal savings for charity cannot last long. Therefore, finding stable sources of funds has become the focus of Wanmen University.
For this reason, Wanmen University has begun to lay out majors on a large scale, including economics, finance, the Internet, small languages..., and even technical training courses for higher vocational colleges have been launched.
Originally, the platform of basic physics, entropy, and string theory has become a "hodgepodge" with uneven quality. Many students even found that the course content was wrong, which made many students in colleges and universities feel dissatisfied.
Around October 2013, most of the college clubs of Wanmen University were almost shut down, and the public homepages of 54 branches of Renren.com were also in name only.
The most unacceptable thing is that in order to expand its influence, Wanmen University has crazily overdrawn its reputation.
1. IP marketing has ruined its reputation
In order to expand its influence, Tong Zhe crazily created the character of the Internet celebrity CEO.
The most important thing is to promote your Peking University undergraduate degree and returnee master's degree. You often regard yourself as the "youngest university president" in China.
also participated in the variety show " The Strongest Small Brain HTML " to explain scientific problems to children.
This practice has caused great controversy among students. Some people say that "there is only Tong Zhe in Wanmen", and netizens even understand the English name of Wanmen University "One-Man University" as Tong Zhe's own university.
This is not over yet. What is most unacceptable is that Tong Zhe's education has been exposed to be "fake".
A post published on Peking University BBS "Tong Zhe did not get a master's degree from the high school teacher in Paris and my impression of Tong Zhe", pointing out that Tong Zhe's academic qualifications are not true.
For this reason, Tong Zhe published an article "My Education Detailed Description" to sort out his entire experience from elementary school to master's degree.The description of
pointed out that Tong Zhe did study at Peking University for 3 years, but because he did not study the full 4-year course, he got a Peking University diploma, not a bachelor's degree.
. To obtain a master's degree in at the Paris Normal University, you must complete all courses in accordance with the Licence-Master-Doctorat system, that is, L3+M1+M2.
Tong Zhe only got L3+M1, so he did not have a master's degree certificate.
Although it cannot be said that Tong Zhe deliberately faked it, his experience does have some problems, which makes him gradually lose trust by relying too much on offline courses endorsed by Tong Zhe.
2. Cut off the offline classes, but was questioned for "pyramid schemes"
After failing offline, Wanmen University cut off all offline courses and entered online video classes in full swing.
On January 17, 2014, the independent website of Wanmen University was launched, with the slogan "Focus on fair and quality education and promote the solution to the uneven distribution of educational resources."
However, although Wanmen University's courses were charged 20%, they still could not meet the huge business needs.
For this reason, 0,000 universities have launched a lifetime VIP mechanism. Public information shows that in 2019, the "Lifelong VIP" is priced at 9,999 yuan, and you can learn all the courses on the platform at any time.
Many old fans are interested in the cost-effectiveness of lifelong VIP and pay money to join the group. VIP students quickly exceeded 10,000 yuan, and the revenue of VIP alone was as high as 150 million yuan.
money is earned, and risks follow.
In 2019, media reported that through course agency, sales staff of Wanmen University once persuaded college students to purchase "lifelong VIPs" worth tens of thousands of yuan through Huabei, JD Baitiao and other methods, and one agent can get a commission of more than 7,600 yuan.
By 2018, Wanmen University sold classes by buying traffic in fancy ways and giving employees kickbacks. It opened more than 600 offline direct stores in more than 30 cities across the country, and also opened three sub-brands of 0,000 Middle School , Wanmen University, and Wanmen Primary School. The number of employees increased from more than 300 to more than 3,000 in 2020.
The more money you make, the more dangerous it is.
In October 2021, Tong Zhe proposed the VIP scholarship plan, and the "Lifetime VIP" project only needs to "return the full amount after learning 3,600 hours".
suddenly promoted VIP with the selling point of "full return". What does this gameplay look like?
One game: Ponzi scam .
Where did Wanmen University lose its connection?
day eye check shows that 4 of the 8 companies associated with Tongzhe have been cancelled.
CCTV Finance Report: "Wanmen University is suspected of running away, the student group disbanded, and the founder lost contact."
complained in Black Cat, and there are 916 complaints about Wanmen University, and the vast majority of the complaints occurred within 3 days from March 22 to 24.
As of March this year, Wanmen Education's lifelong VIP exceeded 31,785 people. Based on the average price of 17,000 yuan per member, the amount involved in Wanmen Education is at least 540 million yuan if the lifetime VIP business is just.
9 years of starting a business, all the efforts he put into vain, and was called a scam by users.
Daoge believes that the fundamental reason for the failure of Wanmen University lies in the weak product strength of . In the early days of Wanmen University, Tong Zhe was responsible for many courses. Even for other courses, he checked them and even recorded them himself.
Tongzhe described himself: "A person who organizes education will create open classes by himself, and asks better people to record open classes." A character like
has won a lot of favorable impressions.
But as a CEO, it is obviously not enough to just teach and record classes.
With the development of Wanmen University, the user base is getting bigger and bigger, and Wanmen University has begun to shift from "doing refined and thorough" to "making it bigger and complete".
This brings two major problems.
On the one hand, in order to diversify, Wanmen University has found a large number of course suppliers and expanded its own course system.
This leads to 0,000 universities that rely heavily on faculty . Once the teacher does not teach well enough, the courses will not be able to grasp the heart of the college. At the worst, a set of PPT courses became the facade of Wanmen University.
On the other hand, Wanmen University has not done a good job in product iteration.
For example, many users reported that Wanmen University provides recording and broadcast classes, and many classes are still on the shelf for two or three years out of date.
fails to keep up with the time limit, and the most hurt is the subject users. Not only does the textbook not match, but students cannot find the teacher to answer questions.
In this regard, Tong Zhe once proposed that he hopes to slowly adjust the course system through time: "Only by doing the course well, this platform is meaningful."
But it is obvious that using time to solve problems is the wishful thinking of Wanmen University.
In the Internet era, online education, personal growth, interest education and other online learning platforms are fiercely competitive, and major manufacturers have chosen to expand in sub-sectors.
subject education has one-to-one online private education and various auxiliary learning tools, and interest courses are launched in various forms such as AI teaching.
0,000 education only has recording and live classes, which is obviously outdated.
In other words, it is the Wanmen University that once led the era and has tolerated its own backwardness.
When he was pushing for "the full payment of 3,900 hours for life members", facing the students' doubts, Tong Zhe could also overdraw once: "Walking in the world depends on the spirit of contract, I have confidence in myself." The reply below of this sentence
The IP traffic of the word "Tong Zhe" alone is worth more than 100 million."
But now, both parties to the conversation have become a joke.
9 years of hard work have become "naked swimming".
Author of this article | Jingxu
