AI-enabled tuition ushers in the 'intelligent age'

Fulfilling a dream

At age 3, Yang was diagnosed with advanced rheumatoid arthritis, an autoimmune disorder that causes chronic inflammation and pain in about 90 percent of his joints. However, he never let his disability dampen his desire to learn. "I may have pains in my body, but my mind is still clear and curious," he said. "I refuse to waste away on a sickbed. I want to learn and see the world and be a useful member of society."

When he left school at 14, he mostly stayed indoors due to deformed joints and pain. His family, an ordinary household, has devoted most of its time and savings to ease his suffering.

Seeing how the illness was stressing his family, Yang decided to learn about the stock market and finance, hoping to make money at home by trading on the market and improve his financial situation. "No school would want to accept a broke, blind and disabled student," he said.

In 2013, Yang heard a television commercial for the newly launched XuetangX, which only offered five classes at the time. "But it was free, and from one of the best schools in the country. That gave me hope," he said.

However, while signing up for classes was easy, the study process was anything but.

"I had to increase the font size of each character to that of an egg, and it would still take me around 10 seconds to make sense of its meaning," Yang said.

Despite those difficulties, he completed about 15 courses and passed every exam. He then put theory into practice by investing about 5,000 yuan in the stock market. After quadrupling his investment, he quit just before the market crashed in 2015.

That same year, his story of perseverance reached Xiao Xing, a professor of accountancy at Tsinghua University's School of Economics and Management, who taught one of Yang's online classes.

She invited him to a group event at Tsinghua, and sent him an autographed book bearing the inscription, "Knowledge puts wings on dreams." Yang was delighted, "Given my condition, visiting Tsinghua was a dream come true."

Although his health is unstable, he still logs on to XuetangX to learn new things whenever he can.

"The interface now is much more user friendly and the platform recommends classes tailored to my progress and needs," he said. "Although I am not enrolled at Tsinghua, the courses make me feel like one of the students in the classroom. At times, I feel that this is all I ever wanted."