It’s no secret that the jobs market is extremely competitive at the moment. As you can probably remember from your time as a student or if you have applied for an office job in the past few years, you likely found the requirements to have risen substantially.
Long gone are the days where a degree or even a school diploma were enough to get your foot in the door of a job that pays a liveable wage. In today’s world, you will likely need several years’ experience to be considered for the majority of roles.
As a result of this increase in competition in recent years, more and more students are taking up specialised business courses such as economics at leaving cert and college level.
As a presumed Economics major, even if you don't yet have your degree, you are more aware than most about the difference between value and worth, and the significance of every economic theory.
Thus it stands to reason that you, perhaps more so than any tutor on the market, are keenly aware of pricing your services so that it meets the demand of your customer base.
Learning the core principle of economics such as basic laws of supply and demand or price elasticity is a great way for students to separate themselves from other candidates and enhance their prospects of employment.
Tutoring economics can be extremely lucrative for teachers at any level, provided you set a fair price for potential students looking to further their education in the subject. In this article, I will help you to arrive at a competitive hourly rate so that you can make living teaching students about economics!
How to Work Out Your Rates for Economics Classes
Let’s take a typical economics tutor on the Superprof platform as an example. Imagine they teach a group of 4 students leaving cert or college level economics from January to May (10 sessions across 5 months). If this package is priced at €300 then, for a group, they would take home €1,200 for the 5 months, €240 a month, €30 an hour.
If they work 12 hours a week, that is 12 groups of economics students paying the same rates, they’ll bring in €2,880 per month. At first glance, this is a pretty decent salary. The difficulty lies in finding and subsequently keeping students in the long run!
As a freelance tutor of Economics, virtually everything you bring to the venture is intangible: your knowledge and experience, your ability to impart knowledge, and the human qualities that make you an outstanding teacher.
Here, we need to understand the difference between value and worth as they relate to your profession.
Worth attaches a price tag, but value signifies importance.
Your worth as a teacher of Economics must balance against the value your student gains from your lessons.
However important the acquisition of knowledge is to your student is what will ultimately determine your worth as his/her teacher.
That is one foundation upon which to build your price schedule.
People Face Trade-offs
A good example of such a trade-off is the balance of equity versus efficiency.
For the purposes of our discussion, we postulate:
1. Efficiency is the property of society getting the maximum benefit from scarce resources – in our scenario, knowledge and understanding of economic theory are those resources.
2. Equity is the property of distributing said knowledge fairly among society – in our little microcosm, said society represents every Economics student.
What that equation represents to you, the purveyor of that much sought-after knowledge is the time to prepare lessons, time to travel, time spent with your tutees added to the sum total worth of your expertise.
You may also consider your attainment of mastery in the subject of economics as a factor in determining equity.
Unless you are independently wealthy, you must realise a profit from your venture in order to achieve equity.
These are all factors that should help you determine your per-hour pricing.
For your students, things get more complicated.
- Does their current financial position afford them the ability to even attend university, let alone pay for private tutoring in economics?
- They may find value in taking a semester off to earn money by tutoring economics themselves so that they can afford more schooling.
- What, for them, is the assessed value in grasping economic principles?
- How does this learning expenditure balance against their future earning potential as an economist?
- How does their future earning potential stack up against their future financial obligations?
As you project a curriculum to teach and the estimated worth of your venture, your students are pondering their future solvency based in part on what you can teach them, and how well.
That is the very definition of microeconomics, in a nutshell!
Nevertheless, we can provide you with some insight and guidelines to improving your chances of attracting clients.
Arrive at your own personal rate for teaching economics
In Ireland, the typical salary that you can expect as a full-time economics teacher in one of the county’s larger cities is approximately €28,000 – €35,000 a year. When you are trying to arrive at a salary or an hourly rate for your teaching, the local area and the cost of living are important factors to consider!
You should always keep the living expense of the area that you plan on teaching in the back of your head!
How much you will be spending annually on rent, food, travel, etc will play an important role in determining the rate that you will need to charge your students in order to make a living.
According to Forbes magazine, private tutoring is a global industry set to surpass the 100 billion dollar mark this year.
Clearly, tutoring is a lucrative business. Claiming your share of that massive market will require finesse, dedication, and a bit of work.
All of which is doable by employing economic strategies to find that sweet spot, where your rates are competitive – neither too high nor too low and satisfying to both you and your clients.
See more about becoming a tutor.
The Bottom Line
The job market for teachers of economics is much the same as any other industrial organization, and predicated on the same principles:
1st Principle: Recognising that trade-offs exist does not indicate what decisions should or will be made.
3rd Principle: Remember margin thinking – price yourself competitively for your area and level of expertise.
4th Principle: people respond to incentives, so offering something for free is a good promotional strategy.
6th Principle: markets being the best way to organize economic activity; joining the market will give you the greatest exposure to potential clients.
You may refer to Gregory Mankiw's outline for other principles of economics, to determine the best possible outcome to your venture.
Be sure to let us know how you fare!
Earn more tutoring economics with Superprof!
Save yourself the hunt for suitable Economics students and streamline the process with Superprof.
The platform allows students to refine their search according to the background, hourly rate, and proximity of economics tutors that list their services in their respective areas. The number of students e rolling in economics across the island of Ireland is on an upward trajectory and so too is the demand for private tutors like yourself!
It has never been easier to find suitable economics students to teach and more specifically those that are looking for your style of teaching!
By searching for other economics tutors that list their services in the city or town that you plan on tutoring in, you will be able to get a sense of the prices that they charge. This will ultimately help you to make an informed decision on your own hourly rate!
While the hourly rate for private economics tutorials is likely to fluctuate depending on the respective experience of the tutor, the platform will also provide you with a great benchmark to arrive at a fair price. Just a short browse through the different teachers operating across the island of Ireland and you’ll find out what you can charge in your area.
It can be difficult figuring out where to find the right students to mentor and help along the way. Superprof serves to mitigate some of these concerns by matching you with an eligible community of students in your respective subject or skill.
The platform also provides tutors with a degree of flexibility in how they choose to teach the subject. In fact, the majority of tutors that list their services within the Dublin area present students with the option to learn from the comfort of their own home, the home of the tutor or in a remote setting via webcam.
Enjoyed this article? Leave a rating!
Loading...
