Homework
Help, From a World Away
Web Joins Students, Cheap Overseas Tutors
It was almost
But so late at night? Not a problem if your tutor
works 8,500 miles away and 9 1/2 hours ahead in Bangalore, India.
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In an hour-long session that cost just $18, the Indian tutor, who said his name
was Mike, spent an hour walking Del Monte through such esoteric concepts as
confidence intervals and alpha divisions, Del Monte recalled. He got an A on
the final exam. "Mike helped me unscramble everything in my mind,"
the 20-year-old said.
Thousands of
Tutoring companies figure: If low-paid workers in
But educational outsourcing has sparked a fierce response from teachers and
other critics who argue that some companies are using unqualified overseas
tutors to increase their profit margins.
"We don't believe that education should become a business of
outsourcing," said Rob Weil, deputy director of educational issues at the
American Federation of Teachers. "When you start talking about overseas
people teaching children, it just doesn't seem right to me."
To 15-year-old Amita Achutuni,
though, tutoring on the Internet just makes sense. On a recent Monday
afternoon, the
"Hi, Amita!" a woman with an Indian
accent said cheerfully. "How are you doing?"
The voice belonged to Lekha Kamalasan,
a $20-an-hour tutor who helps Amita with her geometry
homework during twice-a-week, one-hour sessions. Using an electronic white
board and a copy of Amita's textbook, Kamalasan guides her through the nuances of
cross-multiplication, triangle similarity and assorted geometry proofs.
Amita is one of 400 students enrolled with Growing
Stars, a California-based company whose 50 tutors, most of them with master's
degrees, work in an office in
"I didn't want to do it at first because I thought it would be
weird," said Amita, a freshman at
The overseas tutors work hard to seem as American as possible. Kamalasan, who has master's degrees in business administration
and mathematics, went through two weeks of accent reduction and cultural
training. She learned for the first time about baseball and ice skating and had
to memorize strange-sounding American holidays. And when she signed off with Amita, she said, "Good night!" even though it was
just the start of her graveyard shift in
But Kamalasan, 33, doesn't mind because she makes
$300 a month, double what she made as a high school teacher. "This is a
very good salary," she said.
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The
When Studyloft.com, a Chicago-based tutoring company with more than 6,000
clients, advertised in
But some tutoring companies worry that outsourcing could be bad for
business. Francesco Lecciso, a director of New
York-based Brainfuse Online Tutoring, said only 70 of
the firm's 1,000 tutors live abroad, in
"It's used as a pejorative weapon by our competitors," he said. "It such a hot-button political issue."
Educational outsourcing has become even more contentious as companies try to
tap into the millions of dollars available under the No Child Left Behind Act to firms that provide remedial tutoring. Both
Studyloft.com and Growing Stars hope to qualify for those funds.
Teachers unions are vigorously lobbying for legislation that would make it more
difficult for overseas tutors to receive No Child Left Behind funds. Weil, of
the American Federation of Teachers, said after-school tutors should be
required to pass the same rigorous certification process as public school
teachers.
"Quality control doesn't end at
Some companies are thinking of educational outsourcing on a much broader
scale than just tutoring. The Kentucky Community and Technical College System
is outsourcing the grading of some papers to Smarthinking,
a District-based online tutoring company that works with 70,000 students at 300
schools across the country and has both tutors in the United States and abroad.
"Essentially we are acting as the teaching assistant," said Burck Smith, the firm's chief executive and co-founder.
"We can do better service, more consistent service, and at a better
price."
Smith says he believes that eventually schools will outsource their office
hours, review sessions and other aspects of instruction to teachers that might
be located anywhere in the world. Right now, about 20 percent of Smarthinking's 500 tutors are in countries such as
"This is no different than what happens in any industry. Labor gets
stratified," Smith said. "And that leads to the democratization of
education, because the lower prices for tutoring means the rich and poor can
access the same services."
But when Alex Del Monte called up his Studyloft.com tutor right before his
exam last semester, he didn't ponder any grand theories about outsourcing. He
just wanted help. "All I know is that the tutor's name is Mike and that he
helped me ace my test," he said.
Actually, the tutor's name is Mahakali Murthy, but
like many Studyloft.com tutors, he uses a fake name to seem more American. Del
Monte has used the service about every other week this semester, and he vowed
that he would finish his studying well before finals this month.
"But realistically," he laughed, "I'll most likely be up
again at