Tencent Class bets big on online vocational education industry

Tencent Class, an online vocational education platform under tech giant Tencent Holdings Ltd, will provide more data flows to top-tier organizations that offer courses at the platform, and continue to support high-quality educational resources this year.

"The number of organizations that offer courses at Tencent Class has surpassed 72,000, with annual growth rate of top 100 institutions surging 62 percent in 2019," said Chen Shujun, vice-president of Tencent Education and general manager of online education at Tencent. 

More than 30 educational institutions have witnessed their revenues surpass 10 million yuan ($1.5 million) in the past year, Chen said, adding IT, design and creation, career certificates and postgraduate entrance examinations are the main growth categories.

More than 178,000 courses are offered in Tencent Class, and 70 percent of the users are under 29 years, with the post-2000s generation increasing significantly, Chen noted.

The platform will also pay attention to the assessment of courses, in order to improve the quality of courses and guarantee the user rights, as well as help more institutions generate more than 10 million yuan revenue.

Industry statistics showed the overall market size of vocational education exceeded 260 billion yuan in 2019, of which the scale of online vocational education was 39.33 billion yuan, maintaining a growth rate of about 20 percent.

In addition, cutting-edge artificial intelligence technologies will be integrated into the teaching, services and operation, and intelligent customer service and intelligent recommendation system will be built to enhance the operational efficiency in the future.