Advice for people who contact my department looking for tutors:

I can't speak for the other professors in the department, but my advisor bills out his consulting time at the rate of $2500/day. And we grad students are actually paid well enough that we don't see a lot of benefit to doing tutoring on the side, once you factor in the logistical hassle and the inflated expectations of tutorees.

So when you send an email to our department looking for a tutor for $20/hour and no one responds, leave it be. Don't follow it up with an angry email about how you can't believe no one is willing to earn "good money". We're all already taking financial hits in the interest of advancing our field and educating people in it: it's called "being a professor/grad student instead of being in industry". We don't owe you anything, although maybe we'd feel some obligation if you were actually an undergrad in our department -- or even taking a class in our department -- as opposed to being a grad student in a BS professional masters program who is only required to take an exceptionally watered-down class to begin with.

Comments

[Early Retirement Extreme]

For anyone outside the passionate ivory towers, the focus on monetary compensation is higher. For them the pay scale for grad students (and postdocs and assist. profs as well) is a joke. This is why "industry" doesn't get it. Of course they should get it when someone says "no" .. OTOH maybe not :O)

[S/100/30]

For anyone outside the passionate ivory towers, the focus on monetary compensation is higher. For them the pay scale for grad students (and postdocs and assist. profs as well) is a joke

Which is why I thought he'd take the hint that the lack of a response maybe meant he wasn't offering enough!

Luckily he hasn't emailed a third time yet :).