Outsourcing homework to India

[ChromeFoundry]

Six days a week in the wee hours of the morning, Saswati Patnaik logs into her home computer.

The homemaker - and tutor for a Bangalore company called TutorVista - rises early to help Western high school students write English term papers, prepare essays or finish homework assignments.

Outsourcing, of course, started as a way for Western companies to lower costs by shifting work to cheaper locations.

After nearly two decades, that practice has become so mainstream that hundreds of US businesses - from Wall Street banks to law firms, architects and others - routinely outsource to India.

But now a growing number of individual Americans and Australians are following in the footsteps of businesses - and outsourcing homework.

For $US99 ($A107) a month, TutorVista customers from the US, Australia, Canada, Korea and the UK get unlimited coaching in English, maths or science from Patnaik or one of her 1,500 fellow tutors.Similar personalised services in the United States charge about $US40 ($A43) an hour.

"The economic downturn has pushed education to the top of the average American family’s monthly household budget," said Krishnan Ganesh, CEO and founder of TutorVista.

"More Americans feel that education is their only safety anchor, the only thing that can help them stay competitive in this world."

To meet growing demand, TutorVista is adding another 1,500 teachers across India in the next few weeks.

To be sure, homework outsourcing is no longer a novelty. Several Indian companies offer the service, operating like call centres with tutors sitting in a common office.

But companies like TutorVista are now extending the trend directly from the homes of Indian tutors to those of American students.

Technology has already made communication seamless from anywhere-India to anywhere-United States, said CEO Ganesh.

There is no stopping the trend now.

Continues: http://www.watoday.com.au/world/outsourcing-homework-to-india-20100409-ryh3.html

[Skittles]

1. LOL

here's a sample of some outsourced writing in a work class I was required to take:

As you see, all these processes, even they are discrete presented, but actually all the activities within each processes are those activities a project plans to do, which will be considered during project planning process. And during project execution and control, the project monitoring and control process will monitor and control all the activities. The support processes group will have the same relationship with the project planning and project monitoring and control process, just as the engineering processes group does.

[OhioChick]

2. Words fail me....

:rofl:

[Skittles]

5. they requested feedback

so I posted that paragraph with this comment:

"It's nice to know I can sit back and let the project do the planning for me."

[John N Morgan]

3. For $US99 ($A107) a month for outsourced service vs. $US40 an hour in the US and the jobs are going

overseas? What's wrong with this picture.

There are out of work Mathematicians and Engineers that would go to the home of a student for $40/hr.

[Michigan-Arizona]

8. What's wrong with this picture? You got that right! n/t

[jody]

4. Great idea, US students outsource their homework to others who will be qualified for US jobs that US

students are no longer qualified to hold because they shirked their responsibility to learn in class.

:rofl: :sarcasm:

[DesertFlower]

6. exactly. nt

[customerserviceguy]

7. How ironic

US students, outsourcing homework to Indians, hoping to get degrees that will lead to jobs that Indians will do for much less than half the cost, leaving the US student saddled with loan debt.

They've got us coming and going.