I have refrained from posting this due to the fear of it violating the promotion rules (mods, do let me know if this is against the rules, I will take it down), but some time ago, I made a peer tutoring platform specifically aimed towards Malaysian university students after witnessing my own classmates struggle through their academics with barely anybody there to help them, not even AI was able to. It's called IntraTutor. (Web App: https://app.intratutor.com/ Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/intratutor/)

It's a platform where university students or graduates/alumni such as you and me can offer to become peer tutors to other university students, or seek out tutoring from other university students, even from the same university as yourself, whom understands your specific university's syllabus content and nuances better than external tutors or AI (whose effects many universities are seemingly trying to curb as we speak).

It's a simple web application that works as a marketplace for tutoring services, and also as a quest board to put up tutoring requests for subjects you're struggling with, hoping that a tutor will pick it up, it started out as my university final year project (which didn't allow me to use the fancy libraries and frameworks) and paired with my poor aesthetic sense, I apologise in advance if the site looks a bit ugly. The Instagram account delves into topics and problems relevant with unviersity student's day-to-day life, frustrations, doubts, and other relevant topics, and attempts to answer those questions in a way that can help university students suffering from those problems, sometimes it's lighthearted memes instead.

In an era where such marketplaces easily take 25%-35% of each transaction value to maximise their profit, we only take 10% from the 4th class onwards, with the first 3 classes exempt from it, and we pay for the processing fees out of our own pocket. Unfortunately, this is all we can afford to offer as a small sign-up bonus with our limited cash buffer. The purpose of the 10% commission cut is not for profit, but just hoping to at least break even on the infrastructure and computing cost of running this platform to begin with.

My motivation:

My dream is for one day, a world where learning is cooperative and collaborative can be made, rather than competitive, where academic comparison becomes the theft of everyone's joy. I want a world where university students can get the academic help they need without feeling lost or alone in their battles. I want to make higher education an enjoyable and rewarding process that one enjoys, not a dreadful one that we struggle and endure through. I hope what I made is at least a tiny step in this direction.

I have seen not just one, but more than a couple of my own classmates drop out of the programme just 1 semester into their studies, because they failed subjects where nobody was there to help them with, which was very sad for me to see. As for me, there is just so much I can do myself; I do not have the time to help everyone around me in their studies, nor can I help those whose major I did not study. Now that I have graduated, I have lost the ability to help even those I could, for I have no way to reach them. I do not wish to subject that to anyone who's working hard in their studies right now and into the future. I want to support them the only way I know, by cultivating more people to become peer tutors like how I did for my own classmates back then.

The site itself is currently in the red, losing money since its inception and not creating enough traffic or revenue to even break even on its cloud computing costs that I'm paying out of my pocket every month, with social media traction practically invisible. We're not a VC-backed startup, far from it, nor is me and my 2 other team members come from affluent backgrounds to keep this going forever, we're also occupied with our day jobs and commitments; without the money to burn, we don't have that much money to spend on the development, maintenance, or marketing either, if this stagnant state goes on, we might have no choice but to stop this thing entirely and let it rest in peace forever.

If this is something you think university students will need, it would be great if you could support us by following our Instagram page, or even sign up and become our tutor.

If there are any questions about this, or if you encountered any problems, bugs, issues, or whatever, do not hesitate to contact me by any means necessary. Whether it's email, Reddit DMs, Instagram DMs, anything, even comments on this post, I will read everything and get back to you at my earliest convenience.