Tutors, many of them professors moonlighting from other universities or professionals in fields such as business or social work, are hired under eight-year contracts, to encourage continuity. They are paid 13 pounds for every assignment they grade, plus more for tutorial time. If they hold other jobs, tutors won't be assigned more than a 60-credit load. That keeps them from spreading themselves too thin and shortchanging students, says Juliet A. Bishop, a former tutor who now supervises the training of Open U. tutors in the area around Nottingham. It's time-consuming to support students at a distance.
Tutors recognize the limitations on their jobs.
To me, it's a tarted-up correspondence class. But it's high-class because of the materials. That doesn't mean tutors are robots. Several years ago, as a tutor, Ms. Bishop says, she disagreed with a course team's conclusions about the value of integrating students with disabilities into regular classrooms. Her own research on deafness suggested otherwise, and she told her students so.