Outsourcing teachers

The dismal U.S. education system is in need of improvement and one option is outsourcing, says James D. Miller (Tech Central Station). Since “outsourcing jobs to India has saved Americans billions while actually increasing the quality and competitiveness of many of our industries, we should now apply outsourcing to education,” he adds.

Outsourcing would allow teachers to delegate work to overseas assistants:

College and high school teachers could outsource their grading, making teaching a more attractive profession.

Consequentially, this would allow schools to increase their recruitment numbers without increasing salaries.

Additionally, more online classes could be taught because wages in India are much lower than the United States; schools could afford to create a 5:1 student/teacher ratio and offer a diversity of classes.

Moreover:

Math and science programmes would benefit from the hiring of knowledgeable Indians who want to teach or gain experience by acting as tutors.

Foreign language classes would benefit from outsourcing teaching to non-English speaking countries since students would be able to learn from a native speaker and have the opportunity of having a personal tutor.

Parents would find the transition to home-schooling easier because their children could connect online with a large variety of teachers from across the world.

Americans’ knowledge of foreign cultures would dramatically increase and foreigners’ opinions about Americans would be shaped by actual conversation and interaction as opposed to the entertainment industry’s portrayal of American culture.

Furthermore, outsourcing would allow the United States to employ the vast knowledge available overseas, in turn, helping to alleviate poverty levels in third world countries. Additionally, America would see its knowledge economy grow, says Miller.

Source: James D. Miller, Outsourcing Teachers, Tech Central Station, May 27, 2005.

For text: http://www.techcentralstation.com/052705A.html

For more on Public Education Issues: http://www.ncpa.org/iss/edu/

FMF Policy Bulletin/ 14 June 2005