news

In May 2024, Guiyang School of Economics and Technology was holding an event. Image from the school's official website

20 days after the Guiyang Economic and Technical School's illegal expansion of enrollment, on August 15, 2024, an interviewed student majoring in auto repair returned to school alone with his luggage to report, while Chen Peng (pseudonym), a student majoring in e-commerce, chose to enroll in other schools. In his opinion, there was no point in staying.

In late July, many netizens posted videos saying that Guiyang Economic and Technical School (hereinafter referred to as the Economic School) had enrolled more than 3,000 students when it only had 600 enrollment places. On the evening of July 26, the school announced that some students would be transferred to other schools, which completely ignited the anger of students and parents. "The extra students were sold to other schools as if they were bargaining chips," said one of the interviewed students.

The Guiyang Municipal Education Bureau announced on July 28 that the Economics School had illegally recruited students beyond the permitted scope and plan through a third party, and was suspected of false enrollment and false promises. The bureau has opened a case for investigation.

After July 28, all new students of the school can get a full refund and enroll in other schools. The local vocational school enrollment market in Guiyang has been stirred up again. A large number of enrollment videos with "economic schools" as the material have appeared on short video platforms. Enrollment agents have rushed to the school gates, filming anxiously waiting parents and students leaving school with quilts, with captions: "I am at the gate of the hotel school. Those who dropped out, please contact me. There are still books to go to" and "The economic heartbroken baby is here again." Among them, "hotel school" is a nickname given to economic schools by anchors.

When a Southern Weekend reporter consulted several vocational schools in Guizhou Province as a parent, some admissions officers took the initiative to raise issues with economics schools, using them as a comparison to highlight their own schools' student status guarantees and sound management.

With the arrival of the school season, the storm is subsiding, but the disorderly competition in the vocational school enrollment market behind it has not yet been curbed.

Diversion, withdrawal, retention

On July 26, the day when the diversion was announced, Chen Peng said that the military training for the freshmen of the School of Economics had been going on for the fifth day. The class teacher did not arrange military training that afternoon, but asked them to stay in the dormitory and wait for news.

In the evening, the head teacher called the students to the classroom and told them that they would be diverted to Guizhou City Vocational Technical School because the school had exceeded its enrollment quota.

Li Yao (pseudonym) claimed to be an "admissions teacher" at the Economics School and continued to post information about the school's admissions on the short video platform. He said that the Guiyang Education Bureau had already conducted an investigation and found that there was indeed an over-enrollment phenomenon, which led to the transfer arrangement.

A "Professional Diversion Informed Consent Form" that was required to be signed by students of the Economics School at that time was circulated online. In it, it read: "In accordance with the requirements of the Guiyang Education Bureau, students who originally enrolled in our school's three majors of Elderly Services and Management, E-commerce, and Urban Rail Transit Operation Services will be diverted based on the principles of matching majors, selecting the best in the city, keeping fees unchanged, and following teachers."

A notice sent by the head teacher of the e-commerce major to the parents' group clearly stated that the transferred student's academic record would be in the other school, and the tuition fee would still be based on the admission standards and would remain unchanged for three years.

A Southern Weekend reporter found that Guizhou City Vocational Technical School is a private secondary vocational school. The school's 2024 enrollment plan approved by the education department does not include an e-commerce major, but only computer application and maintenance, and nursing majors. The annual tuition for these two majors is 8,800 yuan, much higher than the annual tuition of 5,980 yuan for the Economics School.

The child of a parent from another city who was interviewed also studied e-commerce. According to the parent, at dinner time on July 26, the child called her and said that he was going to transfer schools. "They (referring to the school) told the students that they were going to move to another school, and that the school was very good and was a branch of this school. They asked the children to try not to trouble their parents and to take a bus there together." She was very angry when she found out, "Why didn't they notify us parents?"

In the opinion of this parent, there were already clues about this matter on the Internet more than ten days ago, but she thought it was fake news, "and thought that other schools were slandering this school in order to recruit students." In addition, on July 21, the school also issued a statement: "Guiyang Economic and Technical School does not have the qualifications to run a school" and "Guiyang Economic and Technical School students have no enrollment" are all rumors.

Until the child called her, she immediately drove to the school and found that many parents had gathered at the school gate.

Chen Peng was unable to fall asleep that night. At 10 p.m., he looked down from his dormitory and saw many students still surrounding the school leaders to ask for explanations, holding up their phones to take videos, and more and more parents were pouring into the school.

At around 9 o'clock the next morning, Chen Peng's class held a class meeting, and the head teacher informed the class of three options: staying in school, diversion, and dropping out.

Chen Peng decided to drop out. Other students in other non-divided majors were also affected. The above-mentioned student in the auto repair major also had the urge to drop out. On July 31, he told the Southern Weekend reporter that more than a dozen students in his class had applied to drop out. "Such a big thing happened that night. If you were studying there, wouldn't you have the urge to drop out?"

On August 9, a Southern Weekend reporter contacted Zhang, the head teacher of the e-commerce major at the Economics School. Zhang said that the matter had been properly handled and that specific interviews required permission from the Guiyang Education Bureau.

Turmoil in the enrollment battle

According to public information, the Economic School is a private secondary vocational school with more than 200 faculty and staff. Its featured majors include child care, automobile operation and maintenance, and biopharmaceutical technology. The school was founded in 1995 and was originally located in Huaxi District, Guiyang City. It was not until March 2024 that it moved to Guiyang National Hi-Tech Zone. The new campus has better environment and facilities, so it has attracted many students.

On various short video platforms, you can still find several promotional videos of the school. The video starts from the reception hall that looks like a high-end hotel, showing the new dormitory with beds and desks, the brand new running track, lawn, basketball court, and beauty beds and other training equipment.

Not only economic schools, but also many vocational schools are posting promotional content or live streaming on short video platforms. Some short video accounts will label a certain teacher from a certain school, while others are named "Guiyang Public School Teacher", "Guiyang Vocational School Admissions Teacher", "Guiyang College Entrance Guidance Teacher", and promote multiple schools. These publishers use various methods to attract students, such as labeling "What to do if you can't get into high school in the third year of junior high school", emphasizing that the school is "militarized management, brand new teaching equipment", or asking in the comment area whether you want to find a school, and then posting a photo of a student dormitory.

An "admissions teacher" who claimed to be responsible for admissions consultation for multiple schools told the Southern Weekend reporter that most local secondary vocational schools have no score threshold and admission places are on a first-come, first-served basis. Students who come for consultation ask more about the school's accommodation environment, such as whether there is air conditioning, whether the practical training equipment is good, etc., but ask fewer questions about the school's management, faculty and other issues.

"The environment is good." Li Yao introduced the economics school by saying that students will not be forced to work in factories, and they will be recommended jobs 100%. Even if they are not satisfied with the company they are working for, they can go back to school and ask their class teacher to change. He mainly recommended majors such as child care and e-commerce. As for cooking and other majors, he did not recommend them because the venue was not yet built.

In the past three years, the number of students enrolled in Guiyang's secondary vocational schools has continued to grow, with 22,250 students enrolled in 2022 and 25,044 students in 2024. Li Yao told the Southern Weekend reporter that many local secondary vocational schools were fully enrolled in advance in 2024. "There has never been a year when vocational schools have closed their applications so early. This year is the earliest year, and there are too many students this year."

The School of Economics closed its registration earlier than other schools. Around July 20, news was circulating online that the school had illegally expanded its enrollment to 3,000 students. In fact, the direct trigger for this storm may have come from the competition for enrollment in vocational schools. An interviewee said that other schools spread this information online. However, as of press time, this information has not been confirmed by the official interviewee.

Many "recruitment teachers" and parents of students said that it was this statement that made parents and students uneasy, and some students dropped out of the economics school one after another. The student dropouts once again became the material for short videos of "recruitment teachers" from other schools and were distributed online. On the day of the incident, Chen Peng saw many recruitment agents from other schools sneaking into the campus and taking away the parents of the students who dropped out on the spot.

Li Yao said that the school had applied to the Guiyang Education Bureau to increase the number of students, but the incident happened before it was approved. Southern Weekend reporters contacted the Guiyang Education Bureau several times to ask whether the Economics School had made such an application, but no response was received as of press time.

Ma Xuelei, supervisor of the All-China Federation of Industry and Commerce Education Chamber of Commerce, told Southern Weekend that there is room for negotiation between the actual number of students enrolled by each school and the education department. If the number of students enrolled is insufficient, they can make up for the shortage, and if the number of students enrolled is excessive, they can apply for a supplementary plan. When approving, the education department needs to look at the school's carrying capacity and training capacity. Carrying capacity refers to whether the corresponding dormitories, canteens, and training venues are prepared, while training capacity refers to whether the school can successfully train students to take up employment positions.

According to Chen Peng, the school's e-commerce major has 7 classes with varying numbers of students. His class has more than 50 students, and his friend's class has more than a dozen students, which far exceeds the 100 students planned for the e-commerce major.

It is worth noting that the School of Economics also recruited students from other majors outside the plan, including beauty and hairdressing, cooking, etc. Southern Weekend reporters saw that a girl left a message under a video about the school's enrollment problem, saying: "The school no longer has a beauty and hairdressing major, and I can't go back even if I want to", and another girl said that she could apply to change her major.

According to the notification requirements of the Guizhou Provincial Admissions Examination Institute in 2024, enrollment majors must be implemented in accordance with the enrollment major catalog uniformly announced to the public by the Guizhou Provincial Department of Education and the Guizhou Provincial Department of Human Resources and Social Security, and "unannounced majors shall not be allowed to enroll in the year."

The fierce battlefield of "admissions teachers"

In the hot market during the enrollment season, there are all kinds of "recruitment teachers". Vocational schools hire a large number of recruitment personnel to carry out publicity and promotion and recruit students. According to interviews and observations by Southern Weekend reporters, these recruitment personnel include teachers from the school, teachers from the admissions office, third-party intermediaries, and part-time staff.

Chen Jun (pseudonym), 17, worked part-time as an "admissions teacher" at the Economics School in June 2024. He said that this part-time job was recommended by the manager of a billiard hall. There was no threshold for applying. Most of the applicants were students who came out to find summer jobs after the college entrance examination, and some applicants were even younger.

When he arrived at the school, his job was to sit in the office and call the students and parents who had just finished their high school entrance exams one by one according to the enrollment list provided by the school, asking them to make an appointment to register at the school, and at the same time promote enrollment on platforms such as Douyin and Kuaishou. In that office, there were more than a dozen "enrollment teachers" with similar work content as him, belonging to the same team. While eating in the cafeteria, he saw more "enrollment teachers", estimated to be hundreds of people.

Before officially taking up the post, the school organized staff training and explained recruitment techniques. In the WeChat screenshots saved by Chen Jun, the team leader once posted a document titled "Disadvantages of Guizhou Vocational Schools" in the WeChat group, listing various problems of 15 vocational schools, including old campuses, poor dormitory conditions, and chaotic management, in order to persuade parents to choose economic schools.

In addition, Chen Jun mentioned that the team leader also taught him that when replying to parents on the phone, he can say that the school is a public school; and when replying with text messages that may retain evidence, he should say that it is "publicly funded and privately funded."

The salary for this job is high. The team leader once verbally promised Chen Jun that if two students were admitted, each student would be paid 1,500 yuan, and from the third student onwards, each student would be paid 1,000 yuan. However, Chen Jun said that he learned that the commission standard of other recruitment teams in the school was 1,500 yuan per student, with no tiers.

Due to poor performance, Chen Jun was fired after one week of part-time work and did not receive any compensation.

However, Li Yao, who is also the "recruitment teacher" of the school, gave a different commission plan. He undertakes the recruitment publicity of various schools and claims to have cooperated with the Economics School for recruitment for two and a half years. In 2024, he mainly promoted the Economics School and recruited 50 students.

Li Yao told the Southern Weekend reporter that his team consists of 12 full-time staff with a base salary of 3,500 yuan and a commission of 200-300 yuan per person. In addition, he will spend more than 100 yuan to buy power banks and daily necessities for students. He said that this is to maintain the relationship with students, and the school will reimburse them.

When a Southern Weekend reporter contacted a teacher named Wang at another vocational school in Guiyang in the name of applying for a job as an admissions officer, the teacher claimed to be a teaching teacher at the school, not an "admissions teacher." "Unlike part-time and outsourced teachers, they will not follow up after the admissions are over." They also promised similar admissions commissions, and mentioned that if the students admitted were from poor families and could receive national policy subsidies, they would have to wait until the students were enrolled in September before the commissions could be paid. "We have to make sure he doesn't drop out. If he drops out, we won't get subsidies from the Education Bureau."

In the fierce battle of "recruitment teachers", there are also cases of mutual slander. Guizhou City Vocational Technical School announced on July 23 that Song's recruitment team and its employees fabricated facts to slander the school in order to recruit students for other schools. Among the rumor-mongering evidence provided in the announcement, "Teacher Cai" said in the recruitment work group that the school was a private school and that students had to go out to work, "a boy who was enrolled that day lived next to the City Technical School, and his father said that the school was rubbish", etc.

The announcement stated that Song was brought to the school with the assistance of the police, admitted that he had fabricated facts and submitted an apology letter in person. The announcement was also accompanied by several photos of the scene to illustrate the situation.

But parents do not understand the business skills of the "recruitment teachers". Southern Weekend reporters interviewed many parents of students from economic schools. Some of them decided to enroll their children in junior high school after meeting the admissions staff, some were introduced by high school teachers, and one parent worked in Xinjiang, and his child went to school and dropped out on his own.

On August 4, a parent surnamed Wu took his child to drop out of the Economics School. The father walked in front carrying a quilt, and his son followed behind. The child liked the school very much and did not intend to drop out, but he made up his mind to drop out after hesitating for a long time. He was about to attend another private vocational school with a good environment, but the tuition fee was over 10,000 yuan per year. After the father decided to send his child to school, he went out to work, "no matter where you study, you have to rely on your own efforts."

Southern Weekend reporter Liu Yixian Southern Weekend intern Fu Yijing

Editor: He Haining