OCTOBER 2006 123 T UTORING has long been a cottage in- dustry, operating through personal net- works of individual tutors and students. But over the past decade this industry has undergone a staggering transforma- tion. In Canada, the site of our research, the number of formal tutoring business- es has grown 200% to 500% in major cities over the past 30 years, a growth that holds inde- pendently of school enrollments or economic trends. 1 Recent surveys suggest a substantial demand for tu- toring. About 24% of Ontario parents with school- age children have recently hired tutors, and 50% of all Canadian parents claim they would hire a tutor if it were affordable. 2 Once a small and informal “pushcart” business, tu- toring is now marked by franchising, marketing, and corporate strategies. Corporations such as Kumon, Syl- van, Academy for Mathematics and Science, and Ox- ford Learning Center have enjoyed spectacular growth. Now part of a reportedly billion-dollar industry with more than two million clients in North America, tu- toring franchises are publicly traded and have become increasingly popular with investors. In the mid-1990s, Sylvan and Kumon reported annual revenues of be- tween $150 million and $400 million. 3 This article explores changes in the supply side of tutoring. How does the shift from small, casual busi- nesses to corporate enterprises change the nature of sup- plementary education? Our arguments are based on several years of research on the industry in Ontario, Canada. What makes this setting informative for U.S. readers is that, despite the fact that Canada has no equivalent to No Child Left Behind, its tutoring indus- try is growing and is populated by many of the same franchises found in the United States. Below we brief- ly review existing work on the general impact of fran- chising on any business and then examine the nature of tutoring franchises. EDUCATION AND BUSINESS FORMS For-profit involvement in schooling brings new ac- tors, beyond the ranks of professional teachers, into the educational arena. Since the 1970s, there have been two major attempts to allow for-profit businesses to run public schools: performance contracting and edu- cational management organizations. These ventures have not been particularly successful. In contrast, ed- ucational entities such as private preschools, proprie- The Franchising of Private Tutoring: A View from Canada Social changes in Canada have led to an increase in the demand for out-of-school tutoring. More and more, just as in the U.S., that demand is being met by franchises of large corporations that can offer standardized services and a broad range of programs. By Scott Davies and Janice Aurini SCOTT DAVIES is a professor of sociology, McMaster University, Hamilton, Ont. JANICE AURINI is a postdoctoral fellow in soci- ology, Harvard University, Cambridge, Mass. This article is a condensed version of one that appeared in 2004 in the Canadian Journal of Sociology.