If you’re spending money to hire a private tutor, then clearly you’re doing it wrong. It seems that you’ve never heard of the Learning Center right here on campus in building five on the ground floor.

The Learning Center offers tutoring in Math, Science and English. It is much cheaper than hiring a private tutor, who may charge you for something as short as a two-hour session.

This is a massive help compared to actually handing over money to a private tutor: money that can easily go elsewhere, especially if you’re a student spending money to rent a place, to buy books or on other things you might need.

Most private tutors charge rates depends on the educational level that they are tutoring and the level of education of the tutor. These prices range from the low $15 per hour that you might find on flyers around campus, to even the $55 per hour rates that websites like professionaltutors.com charge. Some quick math leads to this: meeting a tutor for two hours per week three times a week means that you’re burning roughly $100 a week.

Turn that into a month and then you’re looking at roughly $200 to $320 total per month. Compare that to simply signing up for one of the tutoring classes, where the cost is included in your school fees. Unlike hiring a private tutor, it’s a one-time payment of $23 for every 24 hours you spend getting tutoring in the Learning Center if you take a paid course. There is also a completely free tutoring course available through the learning center.

Even this fee can be waived if the student has signed up for the Board of Governor’s Fee Waiver. A student will not have to pay anything since their fees are waived, that way you only have to pay for books and supplies.

“So there a number of things students can do and that is a big difference between hiring a tutor and paying, I don’t know, $25 to $50 an hour versus getting a B wavier (Board of Governor’s Fee Waiver) and a learning course here and getting free tutoring,” David Reed, Project Director of the Learning Center said.

The Learning Center has three types of tutoring available for students here on campus: peer tutors, graduate tutor, and campus teachers. The differences between the three are: a peer tutor is a fellow student who is recommended to tutor by a teacher, a graduate tutor is someone who has graduated or is teaching currently, and a campus teacher is a professor here on campus taking the time to tutor students.

“Like I said, a lot of students that can actually be free and I think that is a great way to take advantage of [tutoring] and not come up with a lot of money and not all schools have that or have it available,” Project Director Reed said.