hankyoreh

Competition is intensifying in the nation's online education sector aimed at middle and high school students, as regional and smaller institutes are joining hands to accelerate their drive to be a market leader.

On Sept. 18, Time Education Holdings, a joint venture among five private educational institutes including Chungsan and Hakrim, said that it has succeeded in luring 60 billion won (US$65 million) from an investment company to fund its online education business expansion. The move seemed to be targeting the rise of Megastudy, a market powerhouse, which has expanded its clout even into the online education sector. Choi Won-guk, the head of Chungsan said, "We decided to join hands, considering the rapid growth of the online private education sector...We will provide differentiated services from Megastudy."

Other latecomers are also busy trying to catch up with the market leader. Etoos said that its daily sales in mid-July exceeded 200 million won, three times higher than the 56 million won it posted a year ago. Its spokesperson said, “Our sales stood at just 10 percent of Megastudy's last year, but this percentage is expected to rise to 20 percent this year.”

Megastudy, established in 2000, has been dominating the local private education sector. Last year, the company posted 26.4 billion won in net profit on sales of 101.2 billion won. With around 250,000 students, it opened six more offline institutes last year alone.

Amid such a rapid growth of private, extracurricular education, the public education sector seems to be stagnating. The government-run Educational Broadcasting Service] (EBS) is trying to lure talented and famous instructors for its programs but the efforts are not likely to produce results. “Instructors on EBS complain that they cannot show their full abilities during a program...This explains why some of them pitch in their private education promotion that they will show what they couldn't show during the TV program.”

The online private education market is currently estimated at around 400 billion won, and such a rapid growth is causing many side effects, including charges of overpricing. However, the government is slow to respond to the fast-changing education market. An education ministry official said, “ We are considering measures related to excessive education fees in the online sector.”