Indian tutors offer new class of outsourcing

[OhioChick]

Feb 27, 2007

BANGALORE - From answering bank-customer queries to insurance-claims processing, outsourcing is now moving fast into what is regarded as the heart of culture - education.

Armed with all the assets to provide online tutoring services to clients overseas, India is set to bite into the growing online tutoring business. It is being described as the front-runner in the race to become the world's online tutoring hub.

Online tutoring is big business in the United States, Europe and East Asia, and one that is poised to grow rapidly. In the US, for instance, it accounts for about 6% of the US$2.2 billion private tutoring market.

Online tutoring is an expensive service, often beyond the reach of middle-class families. An hour of online tutoring in the US can cost anywhere between $40 and $60.

But outsourcing the service is changing that.


http://www.atimes.com/atimes/South_Asia/IB27Df02.html


<snip> But there is some opposition to outsourcing education from sections in the US. Teachers' unions, for instance, are opposed to jobs going overseas. They are lobbying for legislation that would make it more difficult for overseas tutors to receive No Child Left Behind funds. There are also questions about the quality of teaching, the impersonal nature of online tutoring, and so on.

[kineneb]

1. heck, pay me $15/hr. and you won't need "online tutoring"

There are a lot of us un/underemployed academic types right here, who would be happy to tutor for a couple of hours a week. Hmm... basic literacy, report writing, mathematics, history, basic science, German (bet the Indians would have problems with that), anything to do with music...

My BA is in Music, with graduate work in music history (didn't write the thesis)...read: overeducated.

why outsource?