International Trade

Amit R. Paley, Washington Post staff writer, should quit his job. The chance that somebody who at "3 a.m.... knew he would flunk his Statistics 52 exam later that day if he didn't call his tutor for help" would then pull an A on said exam after one hour of pre-dawn tutoring is very small. A reporter needs a bullshit detector. Amit R. Paley doesn't have one, and should find another line of work.

That aside, a nice piece about how outsourcing is creeping closer to academe proper:

Homework Help, From a World Away: By Amit R. Paley: Monday, May 15, 2006; Page A01: It was almost 3 a.m., Alex Del Monte recalled, and he was cramming like crazy. He gulped can after can of Red Bull to stay awake, but the George Washington University sophomore knew he would flunk his Statistics 52 exam later that day if he didn't call his tutor for help. 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.

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 U.S. students such as Del Monte are increasingly relying on overseas tutors to boost their grades and SAT scores. The tutors, who communicate with students over the Internet, are inexpensive and available around the clock, making education the newest industry to be outsourced to other countries. Tutoring companies figure: If low-paid workers in China and India can sew your clothes, process your medical bills and answer your computer questions, why can't they teach your children, too?

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."...

"Overseas people." Really nice locution, there, Mr. Weil. Why don't you quit your job and find some honest work as well?

Comments

[a]

There's certainly a place for Overseas People teaching economics and setting economics policy.

[T.R. Elliott]

This long-distance, cut-rate academic advice is fine and dandy. But I'm anxiously waiting for the day when I can cut $1,000s off of my monthly phone sex bill. If $18 will buy me an hour of comparative advantage, you'd think an hour of heavy breathing could be had for little more than $10.

[walkingtheline]

It's quite possible the exam was graded on a curve and the professor presented material in class which exceeded the difficulty of the final exam. Or the exam was hellish but graded on a curve. I once scored in the 90th+ percentile of a CS exam with a grade of 54%, anyway, so can attest that classes like this exist.

Any student who has taken the initiative to arrange for tutoring is probably already quite bright. It also sounds as if this student was already quite familiar with his tutor, and had already spent time with him. So he does not sound like a slacker, which is the way I think Brad is reading him.

The real pity here is that if bright students need private tutors to understand basic concepts like confidence intervals, poor students are likely to be several standard deviations up the creek.

[CapitalistImperialistPig]

I am unconvinced of your point. I recall a hellish graduate class in solid state physics in which the prof devoted the entire term to covering blackboards with odd 3 index symbols. A couple of early attempts to get him to explain brought forth only answers to some completely different questions, after which I (and my classmates) gave up. Not so many hours before the exam, I found a text with oddly similar symbols, substituting only angle brackets for parenthetical types, and realized they must be referring to the same things. With this bit of Rosetta Stone, some of the class made sense, and I was able to pass the exam - my score still stunk, but it was better than those of my classmates!

[China Law Blog]

$18 an hour? Gosh, I can get bright college math students here in highly expensive Seattle for little more than that. If this guy is so bright, why did he allow himself to get ripped off?

[Barry]

Two comments:

(1) 'alpha divisions'?
Perhaps this reporter should use a tape recorder.

(2) Brad, don't sneer - you haven't been personally hit by this, yet. When Econ departments start shifting work offshore, and judge you performance by the same standards (i.e., $20/hr for excellent Ph.D.'s), you'll find out the true meaning of comparative advantage.

[2164th]

Strip away the euphemisms and organized teachers are no different than the carpenter's union, a government protected monopoly. It is a tax on society for the benefit of the privileged union that gets to sell one dollars worth of labor for a multiplier determined by coercion. It further discriminates against any other worker trying to engage in their right to work at any organization anointed by government fiat. It is a simple protection racket for the great bastions of piety and hypocrisy, the US education system.

[bakho]

Overseas people???? WTF! WTF does he think teaches math at American universities? Americans? May be half right at best. LOL

[Tracy]

"WTF does he think teaches math at American universities?"

I guess that explains the really nice locution.

[otto]

The development of better robot teachers will put this outsourcing foolishness to rest.

[Jose Padilla]

Yeah, what China Law Blog said. My son, who is in high school, gets tutoring from a Rice University math major for $20 an hour.

[Rangachari Anand]

It goes both ways. The Indian Institutes of Technology are beginning to reccruit candidates from Europe. See this article: http://timesofindia.indiatimes.com/articleshow/1523225.cms

I am sure its only matter of time before American faculty are recruited too. I know for a fact that China is doing much the same.

[Kate G]

Well, of course he *could* have gotten a tutor locally, and for a lot less than 18 dollars an hour (hell, I've gotten harvard students to come over to my house and clean up after parties for less than that) but that person wouldn't have taken his call at 3:00 am. So paying "Mike" enabled him to time shift and not think through or plan his demands for help. Instead of working hard throughout the semester and approaching his professor or TA (and thus revealing his confusion) he either didn't dare or wasn't encouraged. But in addition, he didn't need to find any help locally.

And of course that is the real issue here. He either didn't plan ahead and never understood the material (didn't work hard enough in advance), or *did* understand the work but panicked and needed his hand held and the basics refreshed for him the night before. Previously that function, the hand holding reality check function, would have been taken up by a roomate or a study group. What has really been outsourced here is not just tutoring but an entire social network. The study groups we used to have (she said, wiping a tear from her wrinkled face) have been sent overseas! Oh the humanity!

Kate G.

[cw]

Brad, I generally appreciate your media criticism, but you're descending into snark and meanness here. An awkward phrase on deadline just doesn't seem worth the venom.

[Doctor Jay]

I am skeptical about the claim "Alex...knew he was going to flunk." Stories like CapitalistImperialistPig's notwithstanding, most of the people I've met who said that were really in more danger of getting a "B" than of failing.

It's just their hyperventilated, sleep-debt-induced panic talking.

[John_H]

I do not mean to sound arrogant but I got top grades in this subject or its equivalent after ten hours of work including all lectures, study, tutorials and the exam. So maybe 8 hours outside the exam.

I would have flunked had I not opened the book.

So it is plausible.

The problem is that the ease at which I did well somewhat dropped as the study got harder. And despite the grades I clearly missed some understanding. So I think unlikely but possible.

[anne]

Kate

"What has really been outsourced here is not just tutoring but an entire social network. The study groups we used to have (she said, wiping a tear from her wrinkled face) have been sent overseas! Oh the humanity!"

Oh the humanity!

[sm]

Well, Overseas People will be setting US economic policy quite soon enough. It won't be because they "work cheap" but because they aren't delusional.

[jt]

You haven't taken basic stats recently if you don't remember how critical a few key bits of information are. If you've been doing homework, etc., and find it easy to memorize equations, an hour of well-placed study really does make the difference between being *really* bad at statistics and *really* good at statistics. I know this both from personal experience (the diff. between the stats I knew the day of my final and the day before was really amazing) and from tutoring people in stats.

[PaulC]

Turning an F into a A does sound unlikely, but I'm with the view that Del Monte might have been defining "personal failure" as something else, maybe a C.

There's also a lot of variance in exam results depending on what topics you choose to study. You could cram and get an A just because you were lucky to hit the topics that were tested.

Many years back, I somehow got a 4 on the AP chemistry exam and got 6 college credits as a result. This was despite the fact that AP chemistry was my worst course in my senior year of high school. I never rose above a B and I think I might even have got a D once. What I think made the difference was a question on buffer solutions. That was one part of chemistry that clicked with me, because it amounted to solving an algebraic problem and for some reason I found it interesting. So I probably nailed one big question and blew enough smoke on the others to suggest that I knew some chemistry.

It might also be that Del Monte had absorbed a lot of material that somehow clicked into place. However, I think that is unlikely to happen in the final hours before the exam unless Del Monte is an exceptionally quick study who had just blown off the course until then.

[Ferangi]

Somebody is making a lot of money.

The cost is $18 an hour, and the tutor get $300 per month. Assuming that the tutor works 20 hours a week, it come to about $4 per hour for her.

So the tutoring company rakes in $14 per hour per tutor! Good business model.

By the way $300 per month is a very good salary in India.

[RT]

Another guy from the WaPo who should quit his job: Jeffrey Birnbaum of K Street Confidential.

This morning's Birnbaum column is another of those sob stories about How The Federal Estate Tax Will Break Up My Business When I Die.

Birnbaum's column:

a) Fails to mention that owners of privately-held businesses have **fifteen years** to pay off the FET.

b) Doesn't provide any numbers explaining just how the FET will force the heirs of the subject of today's column to sell his business.

c) Claims that "the estate tax has for years forced owners to sell to corporate giants, which often stifles innovation, expansion and good feelings between workers and their bosses," without providing any substantiation for either half of the claim - (i) that the FET forces such sales, and (ii) that such sales are bad in the ways that he claims.

He says the subject of his article "makes a compelling case against the estate tax on policy grounds." All I see is a compelling pile of bullshit.

Here's the column:
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2006/05/14/AR2006051400736.html

[andres]

"Strip away the euphemisms and organized teachers are no different than the carpenter's union, a government protected monopoly. It is a tax on society for the benefit of the privileged union that gets to sell one dollars worth of labor for a multiplier determined by coercion. It further discriminates against any other worker trying to engage in their right to work at any organization anointed by government fiat. It is a simple protection racket for the great bastions of piety and hypocrisy, the US education system."

Aaah yes. The teachers' unions. One of the lowest paid professions in America that still manages to oppress students, taxpayers, and other aspiring teachers left right and center. The true scourges of American society, that is next to trial lawyers, gay married couples, the ACLU communists, and brown-skinned _illegal_ Mexicans. I have to hand it to you people, that you're more imaginative in your choice of groups that you can vilify as being threats to the American way of life than you used to be. It is, after all, the 21st century; "Jews" and "niggers" just don't cut it any more as decent targets for your contempt.

[andres]

"Strip away the euphemisms and organized teachers are no different than the carpenter's union, a government protected monopoly. It is a tax on society for the benefit of the privileged union that gets to sell one dollars worth of labor for a multiplier determined by coercion. It further discriminates against any other worker trying to engage in their right to work at any organization anointed by government fiat. It is a simple protection racket for the great bastions of piety and hypocrisy, the US education system."

Aaah yes. The teachers' unions. One of the lowest paid professions in America that still manages to oppress students, taxpayers, and other aspiring teachers left right and center. The true scourges of American society, that is next to trial lawyers, gay married couples, the ACLU communists, and brown-skinned _illegal_ Mexicans. I have to hand it to you people, that you're more imaginative in your choice of groups that you can vilify as being threats to the American way of life than you used to be. It is, after all, the 21st century; "Jews" and "niggers" just don't cut it any more as decent targets for your contempt.

[andres]

oops. sorry for the double post. I tend to get careless when I see red.

[NinjaPlease]

I fully encourage and welcome the outsourcing of higher education, specifically at the college level.

Technically with 1-HB and L-1A visas, we've already been doing that for many years.

In every single one of my electronics, physics, calculus, chemistry, classes my professors weren't native to the US. Only my CS professor was, an ex-harvard industry burn out American.

However, American universities' tuition has increased something like 25% in the past 7 years while incomes have been stagnating.

I relish the idea of neo-liberal economics professors facing their own prescriptions for world-wide labor arbitrage in their own fields. You may be good at what you do, but I'm sure the same ideas you put forth could be drawn from a pool of 20 PHD level economists from India or China, and still be a huge cost savings.

I wouldn't be surprised if we begin seeing colleges dropping classrooms altogether en masse in favor of online schooling---no more brick n mortar buildings, where curriculums are setup and taught overseas.

Perhaps when this becomes a reality we'll see different opinions about "the globalized market knows what's best" for every problem.

What's been going on is great for the Manager classes, and no one else. convert the low prices of overseas exported goods to percentages of buying power based on the median American's salary and you'll see what I mean.

[Barry]

Ninjaplease, the top universities are all about brand name. One could replace most or all of the majority of colleges and universities in the US with 'virtual' set-ups, but they wouldn't have a recognizable name on the diploma. Elite universities could have chunks torn out, but they have (IMHO) an inmmense value to graduates from their sheer selection/competition reputations.

[anne]

Andres:

"Aaah yes. The teachers' unions. One of the lowest paid professions in America that still manages to oppress students, taxpayers, and other aspiring teachers left right and center."

I knew it :)

[Barry]

"It goes both ways. The Indian Institutes of Technology are beginning to reccruit candidates from Europe. See this article: http://timesofindia.indiatimes.com/articleshow/1523225.cms

I am sure its only matter of time before American faculty are recruited too. I know for a fact that China is doing much the same."

Posted by: Rangachari Anand

IMHO, increased competition is not the bulk of the fear from offshoring. What scares people is that, in a number of countries, $5-10 US/hour is a nice career income. In most of the US, it's not.

[anne]

Well, I am thoroughly pleased for in preparing to go to war with Mexico we will need all the intelligence we can get. Imagine all those Spanish calls flying about who knows where and why. I always thought it would come to this, however. Shock and awe to the south, appropriately enough. Mexico, we are coming! Canada, be very afraid.

[anne]

"Bush's Plan to Seal Border Worries Mexico."

Now, here we have as comical a heading as we will ever in our sheltered lives find :) I am all up to the fight, though. We gave them the chance to learn English and this is how they repay us. Mexico, we are coming!

[liberal]

Barry wrote, "What scares people is that, in a number of countries, $5-10 US/hour is a nice career income. In most of the US, it's not."

One thing that's not discussed enough is the PPP parity puzzle.

[radek]

"math major for $20 an hour"

Huh. I charged 25$ (30$ during finals) AND had them buy me dinner.

Interestingly I found that the demand curve I was facing was upward sloping. I started by charging 15$ and only got a couple, not very bright students. Then deciding that 15$ wasn't worth it I upped it to 25$ and found myself getting so many request that I had to turn some folks down. And these kids were much smarter. I think there was a signaling aspect to it. Students figured that the tutors (we were all listed together through the department, but set our own prices) who charged a low fee must not be very good (particularly if you've got one of them funny foreign sounding names). But a tutor who had the audacity to charge more than the others had to be good.

[still working it out]

"Ninjaplease, the top universities are all about brand name. One could replace most or all of the majority of colleges and universities in the US with 'virtual' set-ups, but they wouldn't have a recognizable name on the diploma. Elite universities could have chunks torn out, but they have (IMHO) an inmmense value to graduates from their sheer selection/competition reputations."

Barry,

There is nothing stopping Harvard setting up a virtual university outsourcing training to India.

Haven't you noticed that most of the outsourced work in India is done on behalf of US companies that have very recognisable names?

[still working it out]

Brad has clearly over-reacted here. Now why would he sensitive to a story about moving academic employment to low wage countries ?

[anne]

Ah, they are everywhere, everywhere I tell you :)

http://www.nytimes.com/2006/05/16/world/europe/16dublin.html

May 16, 2006

Now, the Barkeeps May Come From the Ends of the Earth
By BRIAN LAVERY

DUBLIN — Pulling pints from behind the counter of a trendy pub in one of Dublin's oldest neighborhoods, the bartender admits that part of his job is having a friendly ear. "I know the best communicator is a good listener," he said, "so I try to listen."

Nothing unusual for a Dublin bartender, except that Jae Hyuk Lee is Korean and that as manager of the Ice Bar he is one of a growing number of newcomers from abroad who are doing their part to preserve Dublin's traditional pubs.

In recent years the city's storied drinking establishments have come under threat from changing tastes, as people sip wine around tables in restaurants instead of pints in front of a worn bar, and in gigantic beer halls known disparagingly as superpubs.

The traditional pub atmosphere — a tobacco-stained wooden ceiling, weathered regulars in tweed and barmen presiding over an array of taps that spout Guinness and other brews with a gentle hiss — has been gradually disappearing.

Enter the immigrants. Mr. Lee's quirky little pub may be a world away from such legendary watering holes as Davy Byrne's, the bar across the River Liffey frequented by Leopold Bloom in James Joyce's "Ulysses." But after 18 months at the Ice Bar, Mr. Lee is a familiar figure in this part of town.

"Everybody calls my name," he said — staff, customers and friends.

Like traditional Dublin pubs, bars catering to immigrants operate according to an Irish barman's basic principles: drinks served promptly, customers treated with respect and, when the occasion calls for it, readiness to listen to the troubles of the day.

Since members of many other ethnic groups — from Asia, Africa and Eastern Europe — have also opened businesses in the area, Mr. Lee's short, gritty stretch of Parnell Street feels like a bewildering experiment in diversity. This part of Ireland's capital is a microcosmic study of how global migration trends can transform a formerly homogeneous city.

One of Mr. Lee's neighbors displays an array of dangling hair extensions for African women; another sells sausages and bags of pretzels imported from Poland, in three or four different flavors.

The Ice Bar itself has been decorated by an eclectic imagination: Chinese drinking poems are painted on one wall and deer skulls are mounted on another. The patrons are a jumble of students and artsy types, Asian and European, and music fans drawn by Mr. Lee's policy of letting local D.J.'s and Spanish bands take over the sound system.

Mr. Lee likes the "good balance" and says his customers, in an unspoken gesture of good will, drink each other's national beers....

[anne]

When they take over the pubs of Ireland, they have gone too far. Where is there decency? To the towers....

[ob]

What an informative commercial for "Growing Stars" that is.

[anne]

http://www.growingstars.com/index.html

It is truly one-on-one. During the session, the tutor interacts only with your child.

The tutors are highly qualified. The majority possess a Master’s degree in math or sciences and a Bachelor’s degree in education.

We follow exactly the same curriculum that your child follows in school, and address a student’s individual needs in parallel....

Oh well :)

[Rich]

Overseas tutoring is becoming a popular topic.

http://www.learnersparadise.com

This company just created a marketplace for online training, learning or tutoring.

They let the student (buyer) choose what price he/she wants to pay for overseas or native tutors and for what quality.

They have lot of the IT trainings courses and not much kids tutoring.
All the trainers are senior experts and you can get qulaity prices.

You can bid too just like eBay.

If you are expert at certain filed, you can try your luck by being a mentor and see if you can earn a few bucks!!

Rich

[alex]

What is not apparent in the article is obvious if you use the offshore tutoring services. This is not about "outsourcing" your child's education--this is about carefully seeking an engaged, professional tutor who is going to provide the best help possible. If you are looking for tutors that are closer to the U.S. experience, check out http://www.ziizoo.com. There are tons of tutors online from schools such as Penn, Stanford and Harvard. Many even tutor for free. If I were looking for help, I would choose less expensive, better informed Ivy League tutors any day.