https://seekingalpha.com/news/3637644-zoom-zm-stock-gains-3-…
https://www.wsj.com/articles/new-york-city-public-schools-to…
Obviously, with the vaccine coming and all, this is likely temporary, but I wonder if the public schools will adopt some sort of hybrid approach ever in the future.
I believe K-12 don’t pay for Zoom anyway so this doesn’t impact earnings for Zoom.
A data point from Australia, that might be useful, as we are 6 months out of phase with you guys.
I have 3 kids, one in primary (elementary?) school, one in high school and one in University. Additionally my wife teaches at a university. Here in New South Wales, Australia, they shut the schools and universities in March and jumped straight into online education, all using Zoom.
For primary and high school, online works well as emergency learning and I don’t think the kids progress suffered much. The schools transitioned back to physical schooling a couple of months back and don’t use Zoom any more. The primary driver for that was child care, kids back at school frees up the parents to get back to work full time. The kids tell me that while they didn’t mind online school, they prefer “real” school, although the high schooler tells me that she misses being able to roll out of bed 10 minutes before class and eating breakfast during the first class :-).
Other states like Victoria, where they had a bad Covid outbreak during winter have stayed online longer and have just recently re-opened schools. So, I don’t see primary and high school being big Zoom users long term. They will definitely be big surge users if there is another outbreak, like what has happened in South Australia, just this week.
University, on the other hand, is a totally different story. They have been closed since March and will be till the end of the year. The current rumor is that they will stay closed for the first half of next year. My oldest kid has been doing all her study online and all via Zoom. My wife who teaches languages, has been doing all her teaching, course advising, meetings etc online via Zoom. In addition to this, she has been able to attend a lot of conferences and seminars, including international ones, online, where previously she wouldn’t have attended.
I suspect that the university is eyeing the cost savings that they can make out of this and anything that doesn’t need physical presence like labs, will be done online. It won’t be popular, but that’s what will happen.
So in summary, Zoom in primary & high school, only while the pandemic is ongoing. Zoom in universities, big future and heavy ongoing usage.
ijv
(Long ZM)