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Kids in the United States are being tutored by college graduates in India -- and neither of them seems to find the situation weird, at least after a little while, the Times reports today as part of a larger article about "the globalization of consumer services." Tutoring companies train highly educated Indians who conference with American students via online chat; the arrangement costs families less than private tutoring here and gets them on-demand services. "I wasn’t sure how it would work,” a parent told the Times. “But, shocking to say, it’s gone very well.”

Check out Insideschools' 2005 article about finding a tutor, where we took a short look at online tutoring services.