The following article contains advice that I would give to recent high-school graduates who are considering tutoring or even starting their own tutoring business while at university.

Be aware that the ATAR score that you received (and are probably using to market yourself) is not purely a result of your own intelligence and/or hard work.  There are a wide variety of factors that need to coalesce, many of which are outside of your control, in order to attain a high ATAR score.  These include but are not limited to:

• School

• Subject Teachers

• Tutors

• Peer group

• Subject selection

• Family support

• Health generally throughout years 11 and 12

• Health specifically over the external exam period

Please have some humility about where your success came from, as that will enable you to better help others.

While the majority of your time is spent tutoring students, it is the parents who are employing you. While most parents are motivated for their children to do objectively well on exams, they are also looking for a positive role model that can journey with their child throughout the rest of their secondary schooling.

There is an implicit expectation from parents that if you are a good match for their child, you will be able to tutor them until they finish grade 12. If you are unable to commit to that, let them know as early as possible, preferably at the beginning of the school year.

While $40 per hour may seem like a lot when you have just finished grade 12, the logistics of doing 1-1 in-person tutoring mean that you will rarely work multiple hours consecutively. In addition, the work tends to dry up over the holidays, whereas in other workplaces you may be able to take on extra day-long shifts over the busy holiday periods.

Tutoring online can be a good option, as it is much easier to stack students back-to-back. Just be aware that once you go online, there is a lot of competition. In addition, there is a tangible motivation boost from the relationship that is built via in-person tutoring. That is something that a lot of parents, in particular, are looking for. Often a good compromise is to set yourself up at a public library somewhere for a few hours and have your students come to you. You can use online delivery as a backup option in the case of illness, lockdown, or if you are away on work experience/exchange, etc.

Setting a price too low at the outset may make it difficult to increase it later on. The last thing you want is to find yourself becoming resentful towards a student because you initially set your price too low and feel too awkward to increase it later on.

Do some market research to find out what the going rate is for tutors, and don't be afraid to charge market rates for your service. A popular website that a lot of tutors use to advertise themselves is:

https://highschooltutors.com.au/

To do well in business, you don't need to offer the perfect service, only one that is better than what is currently available.

While tutoring is a fun, rewarding, and reasonably well-paid job for your time at university, it may not be the best preparation for your future career. For most organisations, managerial experience at a place like McDonalds would look much better on a resume than history as a private tutor. University years are a special but very short time in your life and should be spent gaining experiences that you won't get a chance to later on. Tutoring is quite a good fit for students on some sort of medical pathway, as most have a guaranteed job at the end of it; however, it may not be the best use of one's time for others. Even if your intention is education, working as a teacher aide would be better preparation for the classroom, as that gives you greater facility to learn behaviour management, the critical skill required of a teacher.

In addition, the industry demand for people who are highly technically competent (i.e., good at maths and science) is hot, which means that many engineering/banking/business, etc., firms start taking on interns from as early as 2nd year of university. If your intention is to work in industry in a technical field, make it your focus to gain as much experience that will aid to that end. Some workplaces are absolutely toxic. Ideally, you want to have multiple offers for your first graduate position in order to be able to choose where you go. To achieve that, you will need to have as much relevant work experience as you can.

Many high-achieving high school graduates are keen to begin their journey of entrepreneurship and see setting up a tutoring business as a very natural first step. Creating a viable, scalable tutoring business is difficult for the following reasons:

    • Low barriers to entry: As there are no qualifications or upfront costs required, there is a lot of competition, particularly once you go online.

    • Low margins: The people you employ will be highly intelligent and will quickly leave and work for themselves if you don't pay them enough.

    • Difficulty finding and retaining staff: Successful tutoring is highly relational; finding good tutors that are willing to hang around is difficult.

    • Time to get established: Even if your business is successful, it will take at least a year or two to set up and start attracting a sufficient amount of clients. By that time you will be approaching graduation and need to move on to other things.

    • Inability to sell the business: As your business is highly relational and contains minimal intellectual property, you will be unlikely to sell it once you need to move on.

Having said all of that, attempting to set up a tutoring business is a fantastic learning experience. As in any enterprise, one learns at least as much from failure as you do from success. Even then, a tutoring business is unlikely to completely fail, it is just very difficult to grow past a certain point.  Virtually all entrepreneurs have unsuccessful businesses on their track record, and, aside from the time spent, the cost of a tutoring business failing is minimal.