Hello there. This education-themed blog post is based on my work and local Toronto news. I currently work for a Mathnasium located in Toronto but now work online outside of Toronto as I have moved to outside of the Toronto area with the family.
I had a meeting recently with the senior staff and bosses. The decision is to close the physical centre and move as many in-centre students and staff to the online Mathnasium system. My boss did not want to take risks as COVID cases were going up. My boss saw that other Mathnasium locations were closing as well as other learning centres such as Kumon, Oxford Learning Center and Sylvan Learning centres closing their physical locations too. There is a revenue hit as we do expect some customers to refuse the online learning experience. The closure starts this Monday December 14 and we are transitioning to transfer confirmed in-centre students to online.
Here is one of many news articles talking about the lockdowns in the Toronto and surrounding area.
Disruption Of Many Businesses
A lot of the news is talking about COVID hurting businesses when it is more of the policies that are hurting the revenue streams of businesses. The circulation of money in the economy also slows down when there are less businesses. The businesses that do survive benefit the most as there is less competition for customers and are the ones that do have revenue streams.
Online businesses such as online learning, online tutoring, technology do not require much physical interactions. They would be unaffected by the lockdowns for the most part.
Delivery businesses and take-out restaurants are in okay shape as long as people wear masks and do the usual suggested safety precautions.
Uncertainty Is Certain In This Case
In the meeting, my boss was not sure when the lockdowns would end. For now, we are running Mathnasium online until it is "safe" to do so. It is really unfortunate timing for new customers and for parents who were considering of registering for Mathnasium in the centre only and not online.
Perhaps we do have Mathnasium customers who are not willing to pay the same price that they paid for in-centre sessions for online learning sessions. Maybe they think that the value is not there in online learning. They would prefer a more dynamic and interactive environment in-centre with the instructors. You can still interact with people online but it's just on screens.
