The offices of Educomp Datamatics in Delhi looks like any other Indian call center, apart from one crucial fact: Its staff are math tutors offering support to students in the US. Welcome to the latest "big thing" in outsourcing.
American schools desperate to improve their students' math grades are hiring Indian companies who provide tutors at a fraction of the cost of American tutors. These tutors sit in New Delhi, Mumbai or Bangalore helping youngsters with their math homework or going over already-learnt concepts so that they do not lose ground during the holidays.
"The world over, parents have a problem helping kids with math homework," says Shantanu Prakash, CEO of Educomp Datamatics.
"The kids need help. It's painful. So if they can go to their computer and get someone to guide them and help them, it's a huge relief."
Tutors either speak using headphones or use a whiteboard and digital pencil so that one side can see what the other is writing.
Others -- such as Educom Datamatics tutors -- do not offer a voice service. Here, the tutor and student communicate only by writing on the whiteboard as they go through the stages of solving a problem.
This new form of outsourcing makes sense for a simple reason. Indians generally tend to be good at math which explains why so many of them write software. And India did, after all, invent the zero (it reached European civilization much later through the Arabs).
American schoolchildren, in contrast, tend to do badly in math. According to US statistics, about 40 per cent of 13-14 year-old American students fail to meet the grade in math and, as it happens, English.
Because of the Bush Administration's 2002 No Child Left Behind Act, if schools do not improve their pass percentages, they lose state funding. This has led some schools to turn to American tuition companies for help. Known as Supplemental Education Service providers, some of the larger ones such as Tutors.com, Smart Thinking and eSylvan, can charge up to US$40 an hour. Educomp Datamatics in India, on the other hand, charges only US$20-25 an hour.
It's a developing industry and to date only four or five Indian companies provide online tutors but of the ones which are up and running all are targeting the US.
"It's just so vast," says Satya Narayanan, chairman of New Delhi-based Career Launcher. "We're just warming up. There is a huge dearth of tutors in the US, UK, and Middle East, too."
Narayanan said, "Students want help and don't care where it comes from. They think it's quite funky to be sitting in California being taught by a math teacher in India."
"The image Americans have of Indians is that they are smart, brainy people and so they think the educational system in India must be good. So no one has a problem accepting Indian tutors," says Prakash.
‘CHINESE ASSET’: The senate cited Bamban Mayor Alice Guo in contempt after a police raid revealed a scam center operating at a facility on land she partially owned The Philippine Senate yesterday threatened to arrest a mayor for contempt during a hearing investigating her alleged ties to Chinese criminal syndicates. The arrest threat came after Bamban Mayor Alice Guo (郭華萍) failed to appear for a second consecutive hearing, citing stress. The case that began in March, when authorities raided a casino in Guo’s farming town of Bamban, has shed light on criminal activity in the mostly Chinese-backed online casino industry in the Philippines. It gained national attention after one senator asked whether Guo might not have been born in the Philippines and could even be a Chinese “asset,” an accusation she
‘DO WHATEVER’: US Representative Nancy Pelosi said on MSNBC the decision was up to Joe Biden, but her lack of a full statement backing him is likely to send a signal The re-election campaign of US President Joe Biden on Wednesday hit new trouble as US Representative Nancy Pelosi said merely “it’s up to the president to decide” if he should stay in the race, celebrity donor George Clooney said he should not run, and Democratic senators and lawmakers expressed fresh fear about his ability to challenge former US president Donald Trump. Late in the evening, US Senator Peter Welch called on Biden to withdraw from the election, becoming the first Senate Democrat to do so. Welch said he is worried because “the stakes could not be higher.” The sudden flurry of pronouncements, despite
THREATS: The Japanese leader signaled concern over Russia’s war in Ukraine, its deepening cooperation with North Korea and Chinese posturing against Taiwan Russia’s deepening military cooperation with North Korea has underlined the need for Japan to forge closer ties with NATO as regional security threats become increasingly intertwined, Japanese Prime Minister Fumio Kishida told Reuters. In written remarks ahead of his attendance at a NATO summit in Washington this week, Kishida also signaled concern over Beijing’s alleged role in aiding Moscow’s two-year-old war in Ukraine, although he did not name China. “The securities of the Euro-Atlantic and the Indo-Pacific are inseparable, and Russia’s aggression against Ukraine and its deepened military cooperation with North Korea are strong reminders of that,” Kishida said. “Japan is determined to
‘STARWARS’: The weapons would make South Korea the first country to deploy and operate laser weapons, the Defense Acquisition Program Administration said South Korea is to deploy laser weapons to shoot down North Korean drones this year, becoming the world’s first country to deploy and operate such weapons in the military, the country’s arms procurement agency said yesterday. South Korea has called its laser program the “StarWars project.” The drone-zapping laser weapons that the South Korean military has developed with Hanwha Aerospace are effective and cheap, with each shot costing 2,000 won (US$1.45), and also quiet and “invisible,” the Defense Acquisition Program Administration (DAPA) said in a statement. “Our country is becoming the first country in the world to deploy and operate laser weapons, and