Tutoring Center Plan: Run the Small Cohort or Cancel Before Commitment?

A tutoring course needs enough paid students before teaching and room commitments become unavoidable. Once a cost is unrecoverable, the continue-or-cancel calculation changes; do not confuse that later decision with whether the original course was well priced.

Use paying students and the promised lesson count

Original assumptions, $ for one four-week course. Eight lessons have five suitable confirmed seats each. A student pays $30 per lesson, or $240 for all eight. Variable materials cost $5 per attended student-lesson; tutor preparation, teaching and room commitments total $700. Assume every enrolled student attends all lessons and no other costs or refunds arise in the run cases.

Each complete student contributes $200 before the course commitment. $700 / $200 is 3.5, so four whole full-course students cover it. A threshold of 28 student-lessons is mathematically equivalent only if the sold attendance pattern can actually be delivered; half a full-course student is not an enrollment.

Decide before the cost becomes sunk

Suppose a separate later decision has three students and $500 already paid and unrecoverable. Only $200 of the original commitment and $120 materials remain avoidable. Assume cancellation would require returning all $720 fees and incurs no other cost. Running produces $400 more cash than canceling: 720 - 200 - 120. It still leaves the original full-course $100 loss.

This illustration does not remove promised teaching or refund obligations. Use actual agreements and tutor availability, and set a go/no-go date before the room and preparation costs become irreversible. Advance fees must fund the lessons still owed.

Check the exact student schedule and the subjects each tutor can deliver. The separate Tutoring Center Financial Model page connects this business decision to the selected product; the figures above are original course arithmetic.