Online Tutoring Still In Its Infancy: Sylvan Learning CEO Jeff Cohen (Part 3)

SM: Let’s talk about your online business. When did you start delivering your supplemental tutoring services online, and what was your strategy for doing so?

JC: We started back in 2001. That was the launch point for our online program delivery. There were a couple of factors driving us to build an online program. One is customer service. We have been very fortunate to have a thriving business for several decades. That business depends on parents and students visiting our centers multiple times a week. In today’s world where you can access almost anything online, and where consumers demand convenience, it made sense to us to provide on-demand access.

The challenge for us was to be able to be able to build the program such that we would not give up anything in terms of academic quality. We have a belief that behind the science and rigor which we have built into our program, the key ingredient in our success is the relationships between our instructors and students. We wanted to build the online platform in a way in which we could sustain those relationships, and not have students simply interact with asynchronous material and call it an acceptable substitute for what goes on in our centers. Our challenge was to be able to replicate online the experience and the success that we were seeing in our physical centers.

That obviously took significant investment and time, as well as a lot of trial and error. However, we have done it. Fast forward several years and you will see that we have now served thousands and thousands of students all over the country by providing access online. As expected, we see the same types of results through our Sylvan online program that we have seen in our in-center programs.

SM: If you are using tutors in your centers and deliver that service face-to-face, what does that do to the cost structure of your offering and business in general?

JC: There are trade-offs. We still have the cost of labor. We have the cost of teacher labor in our centers as well as online. We think that teacher quality is the most important ingredient in the tutoring experience. We were not willing to sacrifice quality or instructor preparedness. We expected to maintain all the quality factors that go into teaching.

However, we were able to automate some administrative functions like scheduling, updating the curriculum after a student finishes a lesson, and things like that. There are cost trade-offs going from in-center to online, which has allowed us to maintain favorable economics.

SM: What does it cost to be a student at Sylvan?

JC: That varies. Prices for our in-center sessions vary from city to city and are based on regional markets. It can cost anywhere from $40 to more than $70 an hour in some of the bigger cities.

SM: At this point, how big is your online business? How rapidly has your online tutoring been adopted?

JC: The adoption has been steady and gradual. It is starting to accelerate, and we are feeling that acceleration from multiple standpoints. Our franchisees maintain the relationships with the families in the communities. An increasing number of franchisees have the opportunity to extend their service by offering online options as a mode of delivery to students and families who come to their centers.

This segment is part 3 in the series : Online Tutoring Still In Its Infancy: Sylvan Learning CEO Jeff Cohen
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