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Private tutoring is a worldwide phenomenon, long-popular in Europe and Asia (Baker & LeTendre, 2005; Bray, 2003; Stevenson & Baker, 1992), and increasingly so in North America (Aurini, 2004; Aurini & Davies, 2004; Davies, 2004). However, this K-12 “supplementary education” or “shadow education” sector is being transformed. Until recently it has been a cottage industry of individual tutors and test prep companies, but corporate bodies are revolutionizing it around the globe. For instance, Kumon has spread from Japan to now boast 26,000 franchises in 43 countries.¹ Educate, Inc., the umbrella company for industry giant Sylvan Learning Center, currently operates 950 centers in North America, and 900 in Europe under the Schülerhilfe brand. Several franchises have expanded from their original target market of math and reading tutoring to aggressively enter new niches, including SAT/ACT prep, high school credits, online tutoring, and post-secondary programs.² These corporations are thriving in niches with relatively little competition from established public schools or non-profit institutions. The largest corporations are publicly traded and rank among top companies in business circles.

This chapter addresses Bangladeshi female students’ experiences of higher education in the United Kingdom through the race/gender trajectory. Research shows that although minority ethnic women invest heavily in education, they go on to face obstacles in the labour market. However, there is a strong desire to study which is evident in the increasing numbers of Bangladeshi women applying to university since 1994. The chapter draws on empirical research with women who have claimed a kind of ‘agentic autonomy’ to pursue education in the face of structural inequalities.

The chapter is based on research conducted with a sample of Bangladeshi women studying at or recently graduated from university. Qualitative research was carried out in the form of semi-structured interviews with 13 participants.

The study finds that Bangladeshi women are undeterred by structural inequalities in higher education and employment. Although they expect to face some difficulty finding suitable employment, they are optimistic about the future. They represent a group of women who have been able to achieve their objectives to study at degree level and show aspirations towards achieving similar objectives after graduation.

Bangladeshi women show agency and agentic behaviour to negotiate access to higher education institutions. This will, in the future have a knock-on effect in employment.

This paper examines the influence of stress arousal and burnout as mediators of the negative relations between role stressors and job outcomes (satisfaction, performance, and turnover intentions) among a sample of AICPA members working in public accounting. It extends prior research which examined these linkages (Chong & Monroe, 2015; Fogarty, Singh, Rhoads, & Moore, 2000; Smith, Davy, & Everly, 2007) by evaluating a model that simultaneously incorporates stress arousal and the three fundamental dimensions of burnout, i.e., emotional exhaustion, depersonalization, and reduced personal accomplishment. This paper also utilizes a recently validated stress arousal measure designed to capture the worry and rumination aspects of arousal posited to be responsible for a number of negative personal outcomes.

The results indicate that role stressors, mediated by stress arousal and the individual burnout dimensions, have a negative influence on job outcomes. In line with predictions regarding the temporal ordering of stress arousal and burnout in the model, each of the job stressors had a significant positive influence on accountants’ stress arousal, and the influence of the individual role stressors on each burnout dimension was either partially or fully mediated via their relations with stress arousal. In turn, the influence of stress arousal on each of the job outcomes was either partially or fully mediated through its relations with emotional exhaustion.