Mathematics Tutoring and Student Success

Courses in tertiary level Science Technology, Engineering and Mathematics (STEM) are perceived by some students as time-consuming, tedious and difficult. The increasing “attrition rate” of this cohort of college students is usually attributed to several factors. Retention and intervention programs under the umbrella of student support services can be put in place to mitigate the worsening situation. Most universities and colleges offer tutoring as part of academic support. In this pilot study, we collected tutoring-related data. We focused mainly on mathematics majors and found unexpectedly that there is no difference in grades for mathematics majors who visited and did not visit the tutoring centre, i.e., there is no strong correlation between the number of hours spent in the tutoring centre and grades in the courses tutored in.