Just when you thought it was just IT and telemarketers needed to worry about their jobs being shipped to India, it seems teachers need to worry too. Or at least tutors....
14-year-old Princeton John sits at his computer, barefoot and ready for his hourlong geometry lesson. The high school freshman puts on a headset with a microphone and clicks on computer software that will link him through the Internet to his tutor, Namitha, many time zones away.
It's called e-tutoring -- yet another example of how modern communications, and an abundance of educated, low-wage Asians, are broadening the boundaries of outsourcing and working their way into the minutiae of American life, from replacing your lost credit card through reading your CAT scan to helping you revive your crashed computer.
And they're making money because there's a market full of people who are concerned about falling standards in the US. What teachers in the US can't do because they are busy making sure the pledge isn't being said or that safe sex is being practiced, tutors in India can do.