Learner: Tutoring for a Flat Rate

If you like working online, have tutoring experience and a bachelor’s degree, a site called Learner is looking for you.

What is Learner?

Learner pairs independent tutors with students for 60-minute online sessions focused on long-term academic progress. Starting pay is $25 an hour for academic tutoring and $35 an hour for test prep.

How it works

If you want to apply to be a tutor, you’ll fill out an application and attach a resume.

The site’s requirements are that you have a bank account, Social Security number, bachelor’s degree (or more); at least three years of tutoring experience (and at least one of those needs to be online tutoring). You’ll also need a computer with a microphone, camera and high-speed internet. The site also suggests — but doesn’t require — a tablet with a stylus for working on virtual whiteboards.

After completing the qualification section of Learner’s application, you’ll click on all of the subjects you’re able to teach and tell them about your weekly availability.

The site may ask you to connect with a chat bot to fill in any blanks in your application. And, you’ll participate in an online interview before being accepted.

Learner review

Online tutoring can be a great gig. And if you want to tutor regularly, Learner may be one of the sites worth considering.

What makes it worthwhile from a tutor’s perspective? The site does all the matching. So you don’t have to look for clients, nor actively compete with other tutors who have similar qualifications. That contrasts with sites like Wyzant, where you get clients based on whether the site’s clients are impressed with your background and profile.

Site-set rates

That said, where you can set your own rates at Wyzant, Learner sets them for you.

Thus, if you tutor most subjects, you’ll earn $25 and hour. If you do test-prep tutoring, you could earn $35 an hour. Again, comparatively, tutors set their own rates at Wyzant — often between $40 and $100 an hour — and simply pay the site a 25% commission on their bookings. However, Wyzant doesn’t assign clients to you. Clients choose you — or don’t — based on your profile and reviews.

Learner earns an undisclosed mark-up on your sessions. All indications say that this mark-up can amount to two-times what you earn. In other words, while they’re paying you $25, they’re collecting $75.

Day-to-day

Tutoring sessions are scheduled for hour-long blocks. And tutors can either use their own materials or ask for materials from their students. The first session is a “trial,” which determines whether you continue with that particular student. However, tutors are paid for the trial, unlike some tutoring sites, like Preply, which expect you to conduct trial sessions for free.

Tutors use two different digital platforms to schedule and teach — Oases for scheduling and Lessonspace for the collaborative whiteboard that Learner provides for tutors to use during their sessions.

Pay

Tutors are paid via direct deposit through WorkMarket on the 10th of the month for the previous month’s sessions.

Notably, tutors are paid solely for their sessions. They are not paid for any conversations or consultations with parents.

Cancellations

Tutors can charge for sessions that are cancelled with less than 24 hours notice, including no-shows.

Concerns

Our main concern with this site is a relative dearth of tutor reviews, coupled with what appears to be a fake site that highly recommends Learner. This fake site, educationmom.net, was supposedly written by a mom looking for a tutor for her daughter. However, the name of the mom and daughter have changed — the photos remain the same — according to the WaybackMachine. This site is now at the top of a sponsored search for tutors.

This smacks of whitewashing, which is usually a bad sign. However, the other signs of whitewashing — multiple, vague but positive reviews — were not present. So, the jury is still out on this one.

But it’s a yellow flag that will trigger us to revisit this site regularly to be sure. And, if you’ve ever worked with Learner as a tutor, we’d encourage you to include your experiences in our comment section — or contact us directly.

Recommendations

In the meantime, if you want to tutor regularly and have the credentials, Learner may be a decent place to look. (You can sign up with Learner here) But watch for red flags. And make sure you also sign up with other great tutoring sites like Wyzant, where you can determine your own rates.

What their tutors say (from Reddit)

I had a really bad interview. It was awkward and unprofessional. I was asked to use 2 different devices, switch back and forth on them, The interviewer then had to rush the knowledge questions, then sabotaged me by purposely asking my knowledge on a subject level I mentioned I didn’t know and didn’t even apply to teach that subject matter. I never had a chance even from the start! Furthermore, I can’t even get a hold of anyone there to talk to about this! Very unprofessional! Beware applying for this company!

I just had an interview with them and it felt pretty similar. I specialize in physics and the interviewer seemed to have a hard time tackling the knowledge check. They mentioned wanting to get through a few questions, but started with one that has a lot of steps to get through and requires some prior knowledge from the student. Not exactly a quick question to test knowledge kind of thing, and it took more time than they had to get through it.

Misleading

They are a bit suspect, in my opinion. I first became aware of them, when their ads started to show up when I searched for my tutoring service on Google. I didn’t think much of it, until an ad from a site called educationmom.net also started to appear in my search.

The site claims to be a blog by a mom who was looking for a math tutor for her daughter. She claims to have conducted a scientific analysis of various tutoring services-go to the site to see what passes for scientific-and found Learner to be the best service. There are dozens of red flags on the site to suggest that the site is a sock puppet for Learner. For example, it is billed as a blog, but it never updates. I also checked the Wayback machine. The site first appears during the pandemic in late 2021. The site hasn’t changed much, since then except that in 2021 the mom’s name was Sarah Linden and her daughter was Jenny . Today, her name is Dawn Philips and her daughter is McKenzie. The pictures of mom and daughter are the same now as in 2021.

Unprofessional

Yeah they are garbage. I have worked with them for a while and they regularly come off as unprofessional. I have been treated like garbage by them and then they wonder why they can’t keep tutors.

It wasn’t worth my time as they were setting the price. I did make a good chunk of change for a while just because I was tutoring so much, but eventually, I started to resent it.

From Glassdoor

You can make your own schedule. But (Learner) pays you 1/3 of what customers are paying for your services.

This company provides students and pays better than the average. This is much better than another company that I tried that requires the tutors to promote themselves. But, as a tutor, you are competing with many others for the opportunity to have a trial session. I have lost more potential students to other tutors than I have gained. There is a committee that assigns the new student to the tutor. The criteria for selection is unknown, but supposedly it might be done fairly. The cost to the client is pretty high and a lot of students and parents can’t afford it.

Works for me

Flexible hours, wonderful communication and tutor support. But Parents/students often ask to switch their day/time at the last minute. I don’t have to say yes… but I’m a pushover.