It occurred to me today that my tutoring actually has something of a screwed up incentive system built into it. Specifically: the better job I do tutoring a student, the less that student ends up needing my help!
In fact, I've had one student go from three hours per week down to two hours per week and soon, as of next week, down to just a single hour. That's a wonderful success story, to be sure, but it also means that I'll soon be making 67% less income off that student than I used to.
It's the sort of incentive structure that could, in the wrong hands, promote bad behaviour. You can imagine a scenario where an unscrupulous tutor might achieve just enough success with the student to mollify the parents but not so much that anyone would get the idea of cutting back on the hours. In fact, someone in that position could quite easily argue for more hours, holding out the hope for even greater returns in that event.
Fortunately, I'm not in a position where I need to worry about bumping up my income and would have any reason to react to such stimuli. I've already exceeded my initial goal (which was 4 or 5 students) and am perfectly happy having a mere 7 hours of tutoring to do each week. After all, who really wants to work much harder than that?! :-)
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1 comment:
Provide tiered service or have a student performance bonus.
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