Majoring in millionaires

Students of Yiwu Industrial and Commercial College pack parcels in a classroom. Photos by Gao Erqiang / China Daily

Many students of a college's unusual e-commerce course are successful entrepreneurs by the time they graduate

Among the many business schools in the world imparting little secrets about how to make money, there's one in Zhejiang province that may lay claim to being the most practical one.

At Yiwu's Industrial and Commercial college, the first assignment for each of the 120 high school graduates it takes in every year majoring in e-commerce is to start their own online store.

Students are allowed to skip classes if they are out replenishing stock, meeting clients and partners, or carrying out other business-related tasks.

But for the next three years, the sales performance of their enterprises will determine their marks, and those who do not make enough money are failed.

Since the e-commerce course was established in 2009, the first 115 students have "fruitfully" graduated, as the school put it, with an online business that not only gives them a livelihood, but also employs graduates from other more prestigious universities. A dozen or so have already become millionaires.

"It's a task no Chinese college has achieved," says Jia Shaohua, the former vice-president of the college who initiated the course.

"I made a promise three years ago to have my students graduate with an average monthly income of 10,000 yuan ($1,603) by doing business online, which sounds insane for many, but now I am glad I didn't break my word."

As the financial crisis swept through China in 2009, depriving many graduates from the best universities of jobs, and while even the entrepreneurship of Jack Ma, the founder of China's now largest online marketplace, was still being questioned, few took Jia's sensational vow, made at a national educational forum, seriously.

But for Jia, who called himself "a born reformer" - even though he has never tried online shopping - it was a "last-ditch effort" to save the vocational college.

Despite Yiwu being a globally known center for small commodities, housing more than 70,000 wholesalers, the college, which supplied personnel such as translators, hotel receptionists and mechanics, was facing difficulties over poor attendance and results.

"Most of my students were underachievers, academically speaking, at high schools, abandoned by their teachers and parents," says Jia, a 52-year-old native of Yiwu. "They were the last ones to find a job, so that's why I pushed them to create one for themselves instead."

It was a daunting task. There were no textbooks and no professional teachers with experience in e-commerce. About 20 teachers were transferred from business management and marketing courses to become tutors, and together with the new intake they were in Jia's words, "like landlubbers pushed into a pool to learn to swim".

Jack Ma's Taobao, China's most famous online shopping platform, became the perfect proving ground for these green hands, as the cost to open a store then was low, and competition was not as intense as today.