Hi there. It’s Brady.
Edtech is crumbling in China. Thousands of instructors are losing their jobs. Parents aren’t sure where they will turn to if their children need just a little boost outside of the classroom.
Our newest member on the team, Mengyuan, dived into the situation at ByteDance, which has aggressively built out its edtech arm in hopes of diversifying revenue that previously drew heavily from ads on TikTok, Douyin, and Toutiao.
The changing nature of education in China may seem sudden, but we can trace back to hints that emerged as early as 2018, when Chinese President Xi Jinping spoke and wrote about the matter and called out the techniques deployed by investors and edtech firms to shape for-profit education.
We don’t know if any venture capitalists and major tech companies took note, but we doubt they read Xi’s writings regularly.
The crackdown on edtech (and for-profit education more broadly) may seem sudden, but the fact is signs pointing to this development were out in the open years ago. How did businesses built upon pyres of millions and billions of dollars miss this? We aren’t sure, but be certain that more changes are about to take place.
Daily Roundup
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