8th March 2012 9:00
By Blue Tutors
We were asked recently by the guardian about how the recession has affected the number of graduate and undergraduate students applying to be tutors with us. Their concern was more about the proportion of tutors who are also existing students, but it got us thinking about what changes we have noticed in the last 3 years since the ‘economic crisis’.
One’s first port of call will always be the bottom line which has steadily increased, and simply looking at our profits would suggest that a recession is good for the tuition industry. In fact, many people think that a private tutor is one of the last things to go when a family is looking at where they can cut costs. This might be true to an extent, but it’s too simplistic, and actually wouldn’t explain why we’re teaching more lessons than ever before when our tuition rates are the same.
An obvious aspect to consider is the fact that we’re still a growing business, and it’s impossible to assess how the economy has affected tuition by looking at individual tutoring companies. Even in a period of prosperity some businesses will fail because they’re just badly run, just as many well run businesses will succeed in a recession. We would still class ourselves as a relatively new business, and a growing one, so we may have been hit hard by the recession, and would be doing even better if it hadn’t have happened.
We have to remember that a recession only really hits hard at the margin; in real terms, a 5% drop in output in the UK doesn’t mean everyone’s salary lowering by 5%, the more likely impact is 5% of the workforce becoming unemployed. Those on lower salaries are unlikely to be engaging tutors anyway, so the effect there for us is minimal, and those on higher salaries are more likely to find another job quickly, or to have savings to maintain a relationship with a tutor.
Maybe the biggest impact that we’ve noticed, and the Guardian’s question started this thought process, is that more tutors than ever have been applying to become Blue Tutors. On the one hand you would be right to ask whether more tutors makes a difference, because we also need more students. However, the increase in tutor numbers and the increased willingness of tutors to travel further to students, has meant fewer students for whom we’re unable to find a suitable tutor.