The eduFire Blog

The #1 reason why I think that many “traditional” education companies (e.g., tutoring companies) are going to be in trouble in the coming years can be summed up as follows:

Compare how traditional educational companies treat their teachers with how Google treats their engineers.

If you’re an engineer at Google, you’re a rock star. You have fabulous amenities, an opportunity to be creative and devote time to interesting projects and most importantly, you’re treated with utmost respect.

Now compare that with how most (certainly not all) traditional educational companies treat their teachers. Some are worse than others but the majority of people you talk to who have worked for tutoring companies will complain of low pay, lack of appreciation and stifling working conditions. My most vivid memory of time teaching for Kaplan was when I shared some links to helpful study websites with my students and was chastised by my supervisor because I was sharing links that weren’t Kaplan.com.

The reason why this stark difference is so important is that Google gets that attracting top talent is one of the most important forms of competitive advantage in the modern era, perhaps the most important form. Tutoring companies don’t typically think that way. They usually tend to think that it’s “the system” or “their brand” (more here on why it’s probably not that). Sure, in the short term those things have power but over the long haul if traditional educational companies lose the majority of their top talent they are going to have a difficult, if not impossible, time competing.

If you believe teachers are rock stars you treat them one way. If you believe that teacher are expendable cogs in an omnipotent machine then you treat them very differently. I’d love to think that most education companies treat them like the former but sadly the evidence just doesn’t bear that out. Which is why many teachers leave those companies and go on to do other really cool things.

At eduFire we believe in treating teachers like rock stars. It’s in our ethos and we’re excited to continue to create opportunities for teacherpreneurs around the globe. We think that one of the reasons why over 1,000 tutors have signed up in the short time since we’ve launched is because they’re looking for something different. They’re looking to feel appreciated. And we’re in turn excited to be working with such a smart, creative and forward-thinking group of people who deserve every bit of the appreciation they expect.

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