Success beyond the classroom for language school founder
In a classic rags to riches tale, the founder of New Oriental, Michael Yu has ventured into online learning with a dream to open a university
When discussing his journey from a leaky classroom in Beijing's northern suburbs to the owner of the mainland's largest private education company, Michael Yu Minhong likes to evoke a fellow wanderer: the camel.
"A career is like a desert. I am constantly searching for an oasis. [To find it,] you need perseverance, a sense of orientation and you can't be too hasty," he once told Forbes magazine.
That first classroom seems a long way away. New Oriental now has more than 700 schools and English language centres in 50 mainland cities teaching over 2.5 million high-school and university students. Net revenues hit US$1.1 billion last year, with year-on-year growth averaging 31.9 per cent over the past four years.
The son of a carpenter, Yu grew up in the countryside. Though education was his escape from poverty, he lost his first job as a teacher at Peking University in 1993 after school administrators discovered he was teaching on the side, a business Yu started in the hope of making enough money to study in the United States.
His teaching methods had proved so popular he had more than 100 students turn up for off-campus classes. "I was punished and lost face," Yu said.