Confessions of a Corporate Shopaholic

You see them staring at you on 5-storey high billboards.  You see their dashing smiles and authoritative poses on the city’s buses.  You see them on full-page newspaper ads where they are pictured with hundreds of students holding up their straight-A report cards.  Yes, they are the city’s star tutors, though they dress and behave like your TV and movie idols.  This, is a multi-billion dollar industry.

When I grew up there were a few tutor schools where we got ourselves enrolled to brush up for upcoming public exams.  Those were usually a few sessions only for each subject and the fees as I recall were nothing like what students today are paying.  The star tutors today have evolved to almost replace the normal daytime schools that students go to.  Their curriculum is tailor-made to survive public examinations, and hence the star tutors spend a considerable amount of time researching the latest examination trends and marking schemes.  Many of them possess enough star qualities to lure aspiring students.  They are well-groomed, articulate, and hardly much older than the kids themselves, making them extremely relatable and approachable – comparing to the day school teachers.  They hire assistants to help them prepare fancy notes and even run errands because their tutoring schedules are so hectic from running around several tutor centers in the city, usually on a daily basis.  They hire image consultants together with professional make-up artists, photographers and designers to make sure they are marketable in this lucrative business. 

I am not here to criticize whether these star tutors have twisted the idea of education, or whether it is unethical to make money out of young kids.  In fact, this is a common trend of fast food mentality of Hong Kong where everyone focus on only the results rather than the means.  The blame is with everyone.  I just see this as a classic example why training and teaching techniques need to be evolved according to times.  Everyone can find subject literature in books and over the internet, and they need no one to simply read to them and repeat case studies from textbooks. 

Students want to hear relatable material so that it helps with digesting and understanding the subject at hand.  In my field of strategic procurement training, we always make use of real life case studies to illustrate the theories we advocate.    Public sector case studies are often popular due to their wide coverage over TV and newspapers.   On the other hand, the trainees also don’t want to be preached  like young school kids.  They want to feel that they are also contributing to the class and hence we are often moderators instead of trainers.   I like the idea that the star tutors are organizing social activities to help bond with the students.  I know, you may argue that they are in fact sucking up to their paying customers, but if the students do not feel that the classes are enjoyable and effective, there are tons of other tutors out there.

I dream of the day that there will be similarly inspired tutor centers some day where we can offer consulting advice to working procurement professionals, whether it is in terms of career progression advice or anonymous yet real life work issues.  As the next generation of public-exam-tutors, will there also be star tutors for new career professionals?  Come to think of it, the “rules at work” are even less scripted and way more challenging.