Online Tutoring Platforms Are Failing Their Tutors
Fairness
Drillby is against free labor from tutors.
In fact, that’s why Drillby was founded. When researching a Korean tutor, David was displeased with how the models of sites he researched negatively impacted tutors. As he continued his digging, David was unable to find even one tutoring platform that was equitable for both tutor and student.
Tutors are an essential part of the tutoring equation. Everyone can agree that students need excellent tutors. Naturally, excellent tutors also have an interest in helping students succeed. These tutors are caring, highly educated, and take pride in students’ success. Not least, happy, successful students mean that tutors find classes more enjoyable, they receive great reviews and referrals, and feel the accomplishment of a job well done.
However, many online tutoring platforms seem to forget that keeping tutors content and equipped to perform their jobs smoothly and easily. These platforms focus on student acquisition and retention because, to a platform, students are the people who generate the direct income.
As such, there is little effort put into retaining tutors. These platforms treat tutors like any other gig economy worker: a disposable service provider who can easily be replaced by another person with a similar profile.
Drillby understands that a top tutoring site relies on quality tutoring. Drillby is committed to making the tutoring experience simple, fair, and equitable for both student and tutor.
Current Tutoring Platforms: 3 Unfair Models
Here’s some of what David found in his research. Names are withheld to protect the guilty, but as a professional tutor you have likely encountered some or all of these platform models in the past.
- The first site David looked at required all tutors to offer a 30-minute trial session for free. The student, of course, paid for the session. That means the platform was charging the tutor a 100% commission for the tutor’s time.
Even worse, the platform’s advertisements were often based around the student’s ability to cancel payment and ask for a refund after the class is delivered. Not only does this encourage the student to shop around and occupy valuable teaching hours from multiple tutors, canceled payments affect the tutor’s place in the platform’s algorithm.
Essentially, the tutor is punished twice: first by providing a lesson for free with no value on the back end (e.g., converting a lead into a student), second by the algorithm penalty that makes her harder to discover for other students. - Another large agency recruited high-performing tutors with industry-standard pay, but inside the system reports from tutors on Glassdoor and in personal conversation indicated some major flaws in the company’s dealings with tutors.
At one point, the company had been fairly small and tutors were matched by hand and worked closely with the students’ academic advisors. Then the company got outside funding and went through a major phase of expansion. They focused on sales, promising results without conferring with tutors first: the clients were poorly vetted and were given bold, sometimes unachievable promises to lure them through the door. At the same time, hundreds of new tutors were recruited worldwide and all placed into the same recruitment pool: tutors were forced to apply for jobs within minutes of posting or someone else would snap up the role.
Communication between academic advisors and tutors was reduced, and new students often seemed disinterested, distracted, and difficult to pin down to schedule sessions. Despite this, a session-by-session rating system was introduced, where tutors’ pay would be docked if they didn’t maintain a rating above 4.9/5 stars for the month. This means even one four-star review for one lesson could severely penalize a tutor doing, for example, only ten sessions a month.
Eventually, the company instituted a bidding system that encouraged tutors to reduce their own rates. This allowed tutors in low cost of living (LCOL) areas to undercut those in high cost of living (HCOL) areas; one tutor reported that this change reduced his hourly rate by 70%. At this point, he handed in his resignation. He offered to explain his decision to management, but the company was uninterested. - The best among the online tutoring companies were several well-known sites where tutors can place a listing for free while students had to pay a subscription fee to access the tutors’ contact details. Tutors report that these don’t bring in a lot of clients, but tutor commissions are limited and tutors are given relative flexibility but little infrastructure.
This type of system is undeniably better for the tutors from a rates perspective, given that tutors are allowed to set their own fees. Some of the sites charge tutors a fairly large commission for payment processing (up to 10%), but payment doesn’t have to be done through the platform.
One problem for this model is that the students have to pay for access before they contact tutors or begin lessons. This could be a substantial downside if a student perceives the platform–and by extension the tutor–as taking money before delivering any sort of value. From tutor discussions, it is clear that preliminary conversations (before lessons commence) are vital to landing high-value clients.
By putting a financial barrier on this aspect of the tutoring journey, it’s hard to say how many qualified students are simply not joining the platform because of the up-front costs. Those who do join are encouraged to try several tutors simply to amortize the sunk costs of platform access.
Another problem is that students only search this type of model by lesson topic. This means that tutors are encouraged to undercut each other. Even in HCOL areas, some tutors will charge £20/hr for what others charge £80+/hr for. This messaging doesn’t inherently deter students who wish to pay for quality, but it confuses the price structure and adds pressure on higher-rate tutors to justify their prices.
Drillby is designed to avoid each of these downsides
First, Drillby makes sure that a tutor is paid for any time spent tutoring.
It is up to the tutor whether she would like to propose a free trial lesson. The algorithm in no way favors tutors who offer trial lessons, and tutors are encouraged to charge for all lessons–even the first–to discourage window-shopping from students.
Second, Drillby’s algorithm takes a student’s budget into account and prioritizes tutors who are within 20% of a student’s stated budget (A student’s budget can be manually reset at any time.). This allows the student to understand what is available at a certain price point without unfairly disadvantaging tutors in HCOL areas or advantaging tutors who undercut normal prices in order to game the algorithm.
Drillby understands that tutors are sovereign entrepreneurs, and allows tutors to set their own prices accordingly. Tutors can charge what their skills, and the market, can bear without being tempted–or even pushed–into demoralizing bidding wars that force tutors to deny their own value and experience just to attract leads.
Third, Drillby understands that over time a student’s needs might change. Tutors suited to beginners may not be the right solution as a student advances his or her skills. Early-stage tutors may cost less than more advanced tutors. As students’ interests and specializations develop, switching tutors might be the best option.
Drillby’s algorithm analyzes student and tutor performance through the lessons and can make recommendations to both in order to ensure that the level of tutoring matches what the student needs. If hand-off to a different tutor is recommended, a transition can be made without penalizing tutor or student.
Fourth, Drillby charges tutors, not students, a flat monthly fee. On top of the tutor marketplace, this platform offers video call capability, a whiteboard, video and materials hosting, and site analytics.
Because the student doesn’t pay for this access, a broader range of leads is available to each tutor. Furthermore, these leads won’t be encouraged to “shop around” with their tutoring simply because they paid a large entry fee. Rather, students’ priority is to focus on the tutors who can provide them the best tutoring possible: the way it ought to be.
Fifth, Drillby is here to help the tutor as much as to help the student. Tutors have access to site analytics and will be able to see how many students click on their profiles, how long the student stays, what section of the profile the student focuses on, and more. This will give tutors the information they need to optimize their profiles and appeal to even more potential students.
Drillby Creates Relationships
There are obvious benefits to a student being matched with a great tutor.
Unfortunately, tutoring platforms that prioritize huge tutor pools and encourage students to treat their tutors as disposable actively undermine this sort of relationship. It seems beneficial to the student, but that’s because the student is unaware of what she is missing: the real advancement that can be seen with a dedicated, engaged, properly compensated tutor in her corner.
The best tutoring is about developing a solid, mutually beneficial relationship between tutor and student. Both sides need to be treated with equal care. Drillby is designed to make sure tutors and students both benefit as much as the other from its platform.
Drillby brings tutors back into the online tutoring conversation.
Interested to Learn More About Drillby?
Drillby is committed to providing tutors a way to shine–without the platform tax.
Are you a tutor who’s tried different platforms and is looking for something better? We want to hear from you!
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