In 2009, the IT training market remained turbulent and highly competitive. On this stage that evolves with the continuous development of the IT industry, all players were eagerly sharing this huge pie. Although tempting, the pie has too many takers, with higher education also eyeing it greedily. Therefore, IT training institutions had to use every trick in the book to meet consumer demands through differentiation.
In fact, from a macro perspective, the development trend of the IT training market still looks optimistic. A professional agency predicted that in 2009, China's IT vocational training market size would reach 7.358 billion yuan, an increase of 21.96% year-on-year; in 2010, China's IT vocational training market size would reach 8.92 billion yuan, an increase of 21.23% year-on-year. These attractive numbers indeed indicate the rapid current state and future of China's IT training market, which is also the driving force and source for numerous training institutions to constantly reshuffle and develop.
However, this does not mean that the IT training market is developing linearly. From the 2009 higher education enrollment situation, expanding the enrollment scale became a reality this year. The decrease in failure rate made the IT training market feel tense again, as most consumers of IT training come from high school graduates. At the same time, the "vocational cultivation" of higher education also makes high school graduates change their perception of university graduate employment difficulties, trying to avoid the negative impact caused by employment issues in higher education in recent years. Therefore, the strong expansion of higher education forces IT training institutions to consider how to maintain their share of the vocational education market, and thus consider how to improve the educational model of vocational education so that consumers can further recognize this educational model and return to the embrace of vocational education.
In 2009, in order to maintain their market share, training institutions intensified competition and fought with other institutions for existing market shares. In recent years, competition between training institutions has become increasingly fierce. From the endless marketing strategies, media bombardment, to poaching students among peers, from benign to malignant, the means are varied. Meanwhile, each institution is working on differentiation. Puxue Anhui (Beida Qingniao) franchise model spread everywhere, Siyuan non-franchise model training, Hongbo Software Education’s "academy-style" education, all have become successful cases of differentiated marketing.
However, external competition cannot truly promote the development of the training market, nor is it the true competitiveness of training institutions. Therefore, some training institutions are constantly exploring new educational models to meet consumer needs through their own innovations. After a series of explorations, lengthening the "pregnancy" cycle of talent cultivation has become one of the trends in vocational education.
Since the rise of the IT training market in 2000, China's IT training has always adopted a "short, flat, fast" fast-food vocational education model, where the training period for students ranges from half a year to one year, only providing skill training, then directly entering the job market. On one hand, since the IT industry was just emerging and there was a severe shortage of talent, reducing training time helped quickly address the IT talent famine. On the other hand, it was also the best business model for training institutions pursuing short-term benefits and improving cash flow. This fast-food style of vocational education once provided a large number of talents for the development of the IT industry, but with the continuous updates of IT technology and the in-depth development of the IT industry, the talents produced by this training model gradually no longer met the requirements of IT industry development. Therefore, consumers' demand for this type of education gradually shrank.
Since 2006, a new educational model quietly emerged. Hongbo Software Education in Wuhan took the lead in adopting a two-year vocational education model and entered the IT training sector, triggering a reform in IT training. In just three years, the effect of having 9,000 students on campus shows that this model is very popular with students and welcomed by employers. Therefore, starting from 2009, some training institutions like Lvye, Siyuan, Wangdun, Yinhé, etc., began to learn from Hongbo Software Education's two-year training model, abandoning the short-term training market, and started two-year teaching. The short-term phased training market led by Beida Qingniao relatively shrank. Thus, with the popularization of the two-year vocational education, the overall "pregnancy" cycle of the IT training market began to lengthen.
At the same time, the lengthening pregnancy cycle will also lead to a reshuffling of the IT training market because the "pregnancy" cycle represents the product production cycle. If there is insufficient strength, it is impossible to support such a long benefit period. Therefore, some small training institutions will inevitably be eliminated. The IT training market will form into scaled brands and group brands, meaning that China's IT training market is becoming more standardized and entering a mature phase of benign development.