Graduates from Yiwu’s “Taobao University” earn over 10,000 yuan a month

Graduates from Yiwu’s “Taobao University” earn over 10,000 yuan a month

Staff Reporter

2013-11-17

To enroll in the Entrepreneurship Academy — dubbed “Taobao University” — at Yiwu Industrial & Commercial College, students must first open Taobao shops and earn a monthly income of more than 8,000 yuan (US$1300) or a Taobao credit rating of four diamonds — credit rating on Taobao, China’s equivalent of eBay and Amazon, is divided into four grades, starting from hearts, then diamonds then blue crowns then yellow crowns, with each grade divided again into five — the Shanghai Evening Post reports.Wang Peng, a student at the academy, is the owner of two Taobao crown shops — the highest ranked grade on the site — and one Tmall shop — which is an account given to brands owners or licensed distributors as opposed to accounts trading consumer to consumer. He opened his Tmall shop just three months ago, expecting to reach sales of 1 million yuan (US$164,000) this year, with sales on Single’s Day — China’s version of Cyber Monday — expected to jump fivefold.

There are nearly 2,000 students at the college who, like Wang, have opened online shops on Taobao. Last year, when the first group of 115 students graduated from the academy, their average monthly income exceeded 10,000 yuan (US$1600).

At a time when Shanghai listed students studying e-commerce as facing the lowest employment in the city on graduation, the college has continued to create entrepreneurs who can make it big, the report said.

China Commodity City is a large wholesale market in Yiwu in Zhejiang Province, which was honored by the United Nations, the World Bank and Morgan Stanley in 2005 as the “largest small commodity wholesale market in the world” and supplies many of the students with the wares they market online.

Wang is the richest student in his class, and has now hired eight of his classmates, whose combined monthly salary is just over 20,000 yuan (US$3300), less than a third of his own monthly income.

More than 10 Tmall shops like Wang’s had been opened by students of the college as of Nov. 11, Singles’ Day, which is the Chinese equivalent of “Cyber Monday” in the US, the report said.

Jia Shaohua, vice president of the college, founded the Entrepreneurship Academy in 2009, splitting the academy off from the normal college system.

The academy offers its students a unique evaluation system, permitting students to get or give orders during classes, allowing students to be absent from classes as long as they can pass examinations, and allowing Taobao ratings to count towards academic credit — they can aacount for up to 12 academic credits a year.

In 2012, among the college’s 2,493 graduates, 308 students were awarded by Zhejiang’s education regulator the title self-made entrepreneur, making up 12.4%, which is the highest percentage among all Chinese colleges.

In June last year, when the academy’s first group of 115 students graduated, more than 20 won crown ratings on Taobao, with their average monthly income standing at over 10,000 yuan. Their businesses generated jobs for more than 200 workers, according to the academy.

Some have criticized the academy for focusing too much on money which undermines the fundamental principles of the collegiate system. Jia argued that one model can’t solve all the problems with the system, but at least the scheme carried out by the academy offers another way of approaching education.