Pros
Any pros were due entirely to the individuals who work in center. Teaching staff, esp those with advanced degrees, were generally able to adjust teaching styles and outdated curricula as needed to ensure students benefited from programs. Full-time staff worked hard and with the best intentions. The work environment was mostly positive, though would have been better if full-time staff members weren't each burdened with the workload of 2-3 employees, and if part-time staff had more consistent schedules and fair compensation. (Overworked and devalued employees are unhappy employees.) These benefits alone would be enough to bump my review to 2 or even 3 stars, but this review is for the company, not the staff, and...
Cons
Cons were due largely to the company itself. The profit motive is supposed to keep the customer happy by encouraging HLC to provide the best product possible ("give each student the best education possible," to quote the mission statement). In reality, it results in a worse product. Here are a few examples: 1. Pay for tutors is insultingly low. Most applicants who accept a tutoring position (and many decline, btw) do so while continuing to look for better-paying, more consistent work. Raises are few and far between and the scheduling inconsistent (10 hours one week, 4 the next), leaving tutors little incentive to stay even if they enjoy the work. This leads to high turnover, which leads to a lack of consistency for students. A student may bond and progress well with a specific tutor, only to have that tutor leave a third of the way through their program. The student ends up with a revolving door of tutors who have varying teaching styles and personalities, not all of which are conducive to their academic development. And while centers do retain some good tutors (mostly retirees who just want a side gig and don't rely on the income to live), the best ones usually leave as soon as they can. 2. HLC continues to use extremely outdated curricula (every reading passage about computers is unintentionally hilarious) because updating it would cost too much money. A good tutor can generally work with what they're given, but what they're given is still embarrassingly out-of-date and often contains inaccurate and, in some cases, offensive information. (Tutors: If the passage is about indigenous peoples, it's best to just skip it.) 3. HLC wants student programs to be as long, and therefore profitable, as possible. To make this happen, they start students with a grueling series of tests and interpret the results to make the students look further behind than they are. Then they design programs that place students in curricula far below their abilities, ostensibly to build "confidence." Sometimes the student does need to build confidence, but not for 30 hours, and on the parents' end, shelling out, say, $1500 for work their child never needed is just not a good investment. If HLC were a non-profit, the "product" would be better. The academic improvements I saw in many students when I worked at HLC were not the result of company policy or the HLC program, but of talented staff who cared about students and knew how to make the best of inadequate resources. Full-time staff have the option of either cognitive dissonancing themselves out of the moral quandaries HLC creates and throwing themselves wholeheartedly into the cult, or quietly disregarding the worst parts of company policy while continuing to seek better, more fulfilling work. During my time at the company, I saw both.
