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interview and writing: xue ruiyi, huang qi, wang ziyi, xiao hanhua

editor/yang baolu

students participate in research activities

one noon in early july, when liu hua was taking the subway through wudaokou station, a group of children wearing red hats and blue vests squeezed into the carriage under the shouting of two adults. there were nearly 20 people in the group, led by a middle-aged woman holding a small flag, and a young girl at the end of the group. many children were sweating profusely from the heat and simply sat on the ground at the connection between the two carriages.

liu hua leaned over to ask around and found out that this was another study tour group that had just checked in at tsinghua university and was heading to the olympic sports center to see the bird's nest and the water cube. liu hua had been in beijing for two years and had never been to tsinghua university. he curiously asked about the campus. the young girl then confessed, "we didn't go in. we just took a few photos at the entrance."

expensive fees, high premiums, poor quality... behind the chaos of study tours, study tour institutions are using various tricks to "reduce costs" and increase profits. in the absence of threshold restrictions and standard assessments, many study tours have been made into performance reports for parents. a person in charge of an institution who has been in the industry for many years said that originally, how well the study tours are arranged and how well the courses are designed depends on the children's feelings, but "at least now, children's study tour experience still depends on the 'conscience of adults'."

"special experience"project

zhang xuefeng would never have imagined that what he said in a speech many years ago, that to experience the real beijing, one must take "the first subway from tiantongyuan north at 5 a.m.", has now become a "project" in his study tour in beijing.

this is by no means a deliberate attempt by the children to "suffer without suffering". during the peak tourist season, when it is difficult to park the tourist buses or traffic is jammed, some tour guides simply choose to take the group to and from the attractions by public transportation - this is packaged as a "special experience" project in some cheap study tours.

a former tour guide told deeper that if you take the beijing west suburbs line, it will be packaged as a check-in project for the "most beautiful west suburbs line" scenic spot, "spending a lot of time queuing, taking the subway, and taking pictures at the station." beijing subway line 1 can also be said to be "china's first subway line" - this is a project to experience history. according to him, formal subway experience studies on the market need to cooperate with subway and tram companies, and can visit the driver's cab, experience security inspection posts, and learn subway dispatching rules. "but if it is only listed as a small experience project in the study, parents who sign up for these groups will not understand and will not ask in detail."

study tour groups from all over the country have not only "occupied" public transportation routes, but also made museums and universities the hardest hit areas for scalpers to resell reservation spots at high prices. as ticket prices have been disrupted, it is common for study tour groups to temporarily change their charging standards.

a parent told deep dive that she had signed up her third-grade son for a summer camp in june this year, but was told by the organization that an extra 500 yuan would be charged before the camp opened in july. the person in charge told her that the reason for the price increase was that several originally scheduled attractions were fully booked, and the organization also needed to collect tickets from scalpers at a high price.

tsinghua and peking university campuses are must-visit attractions for beijing study tour groups. at tsinghua, the daily maximum number of reservations is 3,000. each teacher and student can register up to 5 people per day and 15 people per month. a student complained in the tsinghua tree hole: "the scalpers have taken all the students' reservations, and parents can't make reservations even if they want to come to school."

a reporter from deep dive learned through the xianyu platform that there are many posts with the words "peking university and tsinghua university online tutoring" and the words "current students" and "no middlemen" are used. in fact, they are selling appointments. after asking about the price, the seller told the reporter that the price of making an appointment for admission to the school ranges from 180 to 200 yuan per person.

on july 24, peking university’s official microblog released a “notice on illegal alumni entry reservations,” sparking heated discussions across the internet. an off-campus study group called “peking university golden autumn summer customized courses” split up 139 admissions through alumni reservations, charging each student 10,800 yuan, for a total of about 1.5 million yuan.

the lunch box wang hongwei ate during her study tour

the goods are not the same as the ones on the pictures

many parents have expressed on social media that the study tours they registered for their children temporarily reduced their food and accommodation arrangements due to the large number of tourists during the summer vacation and difficulties in coordination, and the actual experience was not what was advertised.

during the summer vacation, zheng qiu from shenzhen carefully selected a 10-12-person xinjiang boutique study tour for herself and her daughter. the 8-day, 7-night trip cost 8,599 yuan, not including round-trip air tickets and meals. the total cost for the two of them was more than 30,000 yuan, but the experience was disappointing.

before departure, zheng qiu discovered that there were three more members in the group than originally planned. after negotiation, the staff promised to give zheng qiu 800 yuan in compensation and additional drone filming services.

when they checked into the hotel at night, the room where zheng qiu and her daughter stayed had a distinct pungent smell, as if it had just been renovated, and her daughter's rhinitis relapsed. later, they moved to a room with a lighter smell, but they still had to sleep with the window open.

before signing up for the tour, the study tour claimed that it would teach children geographical knowledge such as xinjiang s21 desert highway and karamay oil extraction, but during the trip, zheng qiu and her daughter did not hear any explanation along the way. when they arrived at the wucai beach exhibition hall, the team leader even let them enter the hall to visit on their own while he waited outside the hall. it was not until a casual chat that zheng qiu accidentally learned that the professional teachers she imagined to be equipped with the "study tour" were actually outsourced tour guides sent by the local travel agency.

after the xinjiang study tour ended, the drone photography promised by the product manager was never delivered, and zheng qiu only received the 800 yuan compensation after he posted a rights protection post on social media.

"if that's the case, i can just sign up with a travel agency. it's half the price." after returning from xinjiang, zheng qiu immediately decided to cancel the jiangsu study tour he had already signed up for.

wang hongwei, a second-year junior high school student, originally thought that the grade-level study tour organized by the school would be more secure. unexpectedly, as soon as she set out, she couldn't help but post a complaint on social media.

before the final exams in mid-june, wang hongwei's class teacher promoted the soochow university study tour. at the time, she introduced to the classmates that this study tour was hosted by a professional study tour organization and would allow them to experience university life in advance. after the class teacher shared the registration form in the class group, parents, students and teachers could see who was filling it out. after wang hongwei and her mother waited for a while, they found that almost all the classmates in the class had signed up, so they quickly signed up.

wang hongwei's school divides classes into three levels according to their grades: regular class, nantong class and experimental class. the teacher suggested that all students in nantong class and experimental class go, and regular class students go voluntarily. although it was called a "suggestion", wang hongwei found that only two students in her class did not go, and they were privately talked to by the head teacher.

the 12-day, 11-night trip to suzhou university costs 3,600 yuan, and the teacher requires students to bring textbooks and exercise books. "it's better to say that it's a study tour than to change the place of study." at suzhou university, wang hongwei was in class almost all day from 7 a.m. to 8:30 p.m., listening to her teacher's lectures. there were four two-hour lectures in the class, where professors from suzhou university shared common topics such as suzhou gardens, history, and psychology. the class time missed by the lectures had to be made up in the evening self-study.

the students have boxed lunches for three meals a day. after the evening self-study session, the teacher will briefly return the mobile phones to the students. the students have to rush back to the dormitory to use their mobile phones to scan the code and take a shower. at 9:50, they have to hand in their mobile phones.

the only outing during the 12 days was a visit to suzhou museum and suzhou university tiancizhuang campus one afternoon. the itinerary was very tight that day, and there was no tour guide. students who wanted to listen to the tour had to rent a guide at their own expense.

wang hongwei and her classmates walked around the two scenic spots and ended the tour with a class photo. during the 12 days at the yangcheng lake campus of soochow university, she and her classmates were only familiar with the route from the classroom to the dormitory, "and there was no time to go anywhere else."

the money saved

students’ poor tour experience is often the result of study tour institutions cutting costs.

a senior study tour project developer told deep one that currently study tours consist of two types of projects. the first type is study tours in a narrow sense, which belongs to the category of educational products. the consumers of this type of study tours are schools, and students participate in classes. according to the requirements of local education bureaus, such activities have a price ceiling. if the study tour institutions that undertake the projects want to make a profit, reducing costs is an inevitable choice.

in march this year, sun yingying joined a well-qualified research and study company in xi'an. the company's main business is to undertake research and study activities for schools. sun yingying revealed that local education bureaus have certain restrictions on research and study fees. for example, a one-day tour in xi'an without meals cannot exceed 200 yuan, so the company's quote to the school is mostly around 190 yuan. but in actual implementation, in order to make a profit, the cost of each student's research and study activity will be repeatedly compressed by the company, "definitely not more than 80 yuan."

when deciding on a study tour project, the study tour company will first negotiate a group purchase price with the scenic spot, and the fee for each student can be negotiated to less than 50 yuan, and some will also come with free experience projects. handicraft projects such as painting are the most common, and the scenic spot will provide the venue and instructors, but consumables such as colored pens and paper need to be prepared by the study tour organization.

one month after joining the company, sun yingying was on her first tour as a team teacher. when she got the colored pens prepared by the company and distributed them on site, she found that these pens had no manufacturer and date, and emitted a pungent smell after opening. each student could only get one. the original "fan painting" project became a monochrome painting, and the students lost interest, so the project was hastily ended. however, these projects, which are actually very low-cost, will become a bargaining chip for the company to increase its quotation and promote it to schools and parents.

another major area of ​​expenditure that can be reduced is in manpower. the institution will assign a counselor to each class. these counselors are not employees of the institution, but come from long-term outsourcing agencies. in sun yingying's eyes, their qualities vary.

during a study tour to the terracotta warriors, she reported to her supervisor that some instructors had bad attitudes and used vulgar language, but the supervisor advised her to be understanding. "maybe the supervisor knows that the quality of the staff is determined by the price he paid."

in the quotation list, the institution will charge each student 15 to 20 yuan for the tour guide fee, but the actual number of tour guides is up to the school. in may this year, sun yingying led a grade-level study tour team to scenic spots around xi'an. the school has relatively strict requirements for study tours, emphasizing that each class must be equipped with a tour guide. when they arrived at the scenic spot, sun yingying found that these tour guides held up their mobile phones while explaining, reading words from baidu encyclopedia, and pretended not to hear when students asked questions.

for this situation, colleagues who have been working longer than sun yingying think it is natural: "for less than 200 yuan per person, what experience do you want?"

the second category is the common holiday study camps and boutique study groups on the market, which are tourism products. to be more precise, they should be called "study tours" or "study tours".

it is rumored online that the gross profit margin of study tours is as high as 50%. however, a year ago, after leaving a study institution, ma jiahe opened his own study studio and found that the actual situation was not the case.

although the gross profit margin of study tours is high, like ordinary tourism, the channel dealers take the bulk of the profits. as the executor, he can only get a few percent at most if he does not deliberately lower the cost or violate the rules.

compared with ordinary group tours, study tours have a natural flaw - most of its direct service targets are minors, who have almost no spending power. ma jiahe told deeper that tour groups composed of adults can promote many self-funded projects, such as shopping in stores, horseback riding and taking photos. but study tours do not have such spending power. without the space for hidden charges, many study tour teams will choose to increase profits by lowering costs.

after nine years of working in the tourism industry, wang yu now runs a research and study organization that has transformed from a travel agency. he did some calculations: if research and study tours want to reduce costs, food, accommodation, and the salaries of team leaders are the biggest items that can be cut. "how much a research and study organization is willing to invest often depends entirely on its conscience."

taking a 20-person study tour group in beijing for example, there is not much room for maneuver in the cost of round-trip transportation and scenic spot tickets. in terms of accommodation, if you stay in dacheng road, which is only a 15-minute drive from tiananmen square, and choose a four-diamond hotel with a better experience, it will cost 600 yuan per person per night in the peak season. study tour groups that want to keep costs down will choose to stay in liangxiang and other places, which only cost 200 yuan per night in the peak season. if they save more, they can stay in camps in hebei and other places, and the cost can be lowered.

in terms of food, the 50 yuan meal allowance can be reduced to 30 yuan to be enough to eat, saving at least nearly 50 yuan for three meals a day.

after cutting the two parts of food and accommodation, the third is the teacher-student ratio. a life teacher will accompany the group for 5 days, including transportation, food, accommodation and labor fees, and the cost is at least 4,000 yuan. responsible study tours generally have one teacher for every 6 to 8 students, but in order to reduce costs, many study tours even have one teacher for every 20 children.

after lowering the cost in this way, the organization can earn at least tens of thousands more yuan for a five-day study tour group of 20 people in beijing.

what followed was naturally a decline in the study experience. the remote location of the accommodation meant inconvenient transportation, and more time had to be spent on the road. if you want to go to tiananmen square to watch the flag-raising ceremony, you have to get up an hour and a half earlier if you live in liangxiang than if you live in dacheng road. the children can only fill their stomachs with eggs and milk for breakfast. with fewer teachers leading the team, management becomes more difficult, so the children's free visit and sightseeing time must be shortened. the original visit to the forbidden city lasted 3 hours, but in fact it was only 1 hour. "what do we do for the remaining two hours? just keep counting the number of people and arranging the team."

for study tour products, the real determinant of the upper limit of product profitability is the professionalism of the study program and the level of the instructors. in order to sell courses at a high price, study tour institutions will focus on the study program and the teaching staff.

after entering the forbidden city, low-end study groups will take advantage of free tours or just take photos, check in, and take a quick look. however, high-quality groups will sign up for the forbidden city's official courses in advance. for this item alone, each person will be charged an additional 500 to 800 yuan in course fees.

wang yu once organized a summer panda camp from beijing to chengdu. if the group members just want to "take a look", the 30 yuan ticket to the base is the cost of this project. but if you want to experience it up close, you have to spend 800 yuan to buy only 200 international volunteer places open every day. if you can invite a teacher with a professional background to be the main speaker, such as a doctoral graduate in a related discipline, a certificate of interpretation, and a position in a school, museum, etc., the tuition fee of 2,000 yuan a day is the minimum, and the fees for research and study activities can also rise accordingly. however, some research and study institutions will mention vague words such as "gold medal lecturers" in their publicity. in fact, the lecturers invited are just tour guides with less than three years of experience or even just obtained a tour guide certificate, and they only charge 200 to 500 yuan a day.

sun yingying takes students to participate in research activities at a research institution

who is the protagonist?

the first time sun yingying led a study tour, she brought the students to the entrance of the scenic spot, but the school teacher in charge of the connection was late. without the signature and seal provided by the school teacher, they could not lead the team into the scenic spot, and the children of the entire grade were exposed to the sun. sun yingying was a little anxious and called the connecting teacher several times to urge him. afterwards, her boss called her and scolded her.

“you have to know that we serve the teachers, not the students. we would rather let the students wait for half an hour than make the teachers unhappy.” sun yingying still remembers this sentence, and she thinks it is ridiculous.

in order to satisfy the teachers, the agency will prepare gifts for the teachers accompanying the school and provide separate meals. when the students sit on the floor and eat the bread and fruit they bring, the teachers accompanying the school will basically be invited to eat table meals. having led so many school research activities, sun yingying has only encountered one school where teachers took the initiative to ask to eat with the students. some teachers will also ask to watch paid performances in the scenic area, and the company will immediately send people to coordinate and meet their requests.

for study tour companies, these "personal favors" are part of the cost. the more they spend on managing relationships, the less they spend on students. after completing a study tour, the satisfaction of teachers and school leaders determines whether the cooperation can continue. in comparison, the student experience is not important.

another important task for sun yingying when leading a study tour group is to take photos and videos and make promotional materials. once, the study tour project was executed very sloppily. sun yingying was worried that parents and the school would be dissatisfied, but the teacher in charge told sun yingying that the school was very satisfied with the study tour. "because the photos are perfect and the videos are beautiful, some details of the on-site execution are irrelevant."

since the educational effect of study tours is difficult to quantify, more and more projects will choose to use the money originally spent on hiring good teachers and good explanations to hire photographers or outsource operations, take beautiful photos and videos for children during the trip, and make vlogs, meipian and electronic photo albums. according to wang yu, many of the leading institutions in the study tour market in the past two years, that is, companies with annual revenue of more than 100 million yuan, will add travel photography as a selling point. for a five-day full-course travel photography service, it costs 8,000 to 10,000 yuan to hire a photographer.

"most children are happy to go on a long trip with their peers, and the agency just needs to be satisfied with the parents." observing the current study tour market, wang yu found that many parents have no idea about study tours, and some even just want to give their children "something to do." as for the children's study tour experience, they don't delve into it.

at the end of may this year, after leading the last group of research groups in the spring semester, sun yingying resigned. she could not agree that a product with education as its core purpose could be so indifferent to the feelings of students.

research and study projects developed by wang yu's company

missing standards

the popularity of study tours has attracted many people who want to get a piece of the pie. in fact, the threshold to enter this industry is "high on the surface but low on the surface". according to the "travel agency regulations" and "detailed rules for the implementation of the travel agency regulations", those who apply to operate domestic tourism business and inbound tourism business must obtain a corporate legal person qualification certificate and have a registered capital of no less than 300,000 yuan. if an organization wants to engage in study tour business, it must obtain the qualifications of a travel agency before it can lead a group. it also needs to have a fixed office space, a tour guide, and other conditions. the starting capital must be at least 800,000 yuan.

however, in actual operation, institutions can borrow qualifications by "booking a desk". by paying a travel social network a few thousand yuan a year and contracting a desk, they can borrow its qualifications to undertake tourism business and develop their own study tour projects.

due to the lack of unified standards in the market, supervision is weak, and some study tours without travel agency qualifications are active in the regulatory vacuum. on xiaohongshu, wang yu often sees parents complaining about study tours on the grounds that they are "travel but not learning" and "the goods do not match the pictures", but they are blocked everywhere. if the study tour agency does not have travel agency qualifications, the relevant contracts signed with parents will not take effect.

"they are not travel agencies. the culture and tourism bureau can't do anything about them. the best you can do is complain to the market supervision bureau that they are operating beyond their scope. parents don't understand and don't know who to turn to when problems arise."

in addition to the lack of unified market standards, the uneven quality of tour guides is also a chronic problem in the current study tour market. ma jiahe said that the bottom line requirement for the qualifications of tour guides is that they must have a tour guide certificate. however, it is more tiring to be a tour guide in a study tour group because you need to take care of children, but your income will not increase. on the contrary, since all the participants are children, the tour guides cannot add commissionable items, and all they get is a "fixed salary", which is lower than that of ordinary adult tour groups. therefore, truly experienced and excellent tour guides are unwilling to lead study tours.

a tour guide who has worked in the tourism industry for more than 20 years told deep dive that most of the teachers who are willing to lead study tours have low academic qualifications, limited professional skills, and insufficient knowledge reserves. the real good teachers teach high school history and geography courses, and the daily teaching fee is also considerable. going out to lead study tours, with the same income, still has to endure the wind and sun, "it's not worth it."

in april this year, yang yue, who now lives in shenzhen, was unemployed and looking for a job at home. he accidentally saw a message recruiting study counselors in a part-time job group. the recruiter claimed to be an education group that had cooperation with travel agencies. with the idea of ​​trying a new industry, yang yue signed up.

at 11 o'clock on the night of registration, the person in charge created a group for several "temporary workers" and asked them to gather near the school the next morning. the salary of the counselors is 120 yuan per day, and anyone under 45 years old can register. yang yue's task is to help the team leader keep an eye on the children and prevent any safety problems.

before taking up the post, the organization did not provide any training, and only reminded yang yue and others not to disclose their part-time status to other teachers. because of this, it was not until after leading this group of study tours that yang yue learned that the so-called "head teacher" who worked with him that day was also a temporary part-time job recruited by the education group: "their daily salary is 220 yuan, and the selection criteria are slightly higher than those for counselors. they have to be young and look like a teacher."

it is difficult for research and study courses to obtain intellectual property protection, which is also one of the main factors affecting the research and study market. in the field of research and study education, the high-quality research and study projects that the team has carefully developed are often difficult to organize into standardized and recordable content. for a set of research and study tour courses, a lot of time must be spent on communicating resources, evaluation, and on-site research in the early stages. however, once the project is launched, other research and study institutions will immediately follow suit and launch the same course system, which is a big blow to institutions willing to develop original research and study courses. wang yu told reporters that his research and study institution has done hundreds of courses, but in the end, only three or four were able to be registered.

reducing costs, increasing efficiency and improving service quality are the "impossible triangle", but in order to survive in the fierce and disorderly competition, most study tours can only choose to cut off the "improving service quality" corner and simplify the "study tour" into an assembly line-style "group tour".

ma jiahe previously worked for a research and study organization, which employed more than a dozen full-time research and study lecturers when he first joined the company six years ago. later, due to the epidemic and industry competition, "the cost was too high and it was impossible to support people", and by the time he left, all the staff had been laid off, and they switched to temporary outsourcing from other education groups, or simply looking for tour guides in scenic spots. later, he started his own business, organizing low-cost urban research and study tours, and is currently trying to expand the more expensive cross-provincial research and study tour business. he can't say what choice he will make in the future "if he doesn't make money and no one is watching."

(at the request of the interviewees, all interviewees in this article use pseudonyms)