- BBB RATING: A+
- YEARS IN BUSINESS: 14
- CUSTOMER SUPPORT: 24/7 Homework Help
- SERVICES: Study Resources, Course Notes, Test Preps
Course Hero Review 2024 – Does Course Hero Really Help?
Course Hero provides study resources, course notes, test prep, 24/7 homework help, tutors, and more.
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Last Updated: February 13, 2024
- BBB RATING: A+
- YEARS IN BUSINESS: 14
- CUSTOMER SUPPORT: 24/7 Homework Help
- SERVICES: Study Resources, Course Notes, Test Preps
Best For
Forming Study Groups
STRENGTHS
- Consistent flow of fresh study material
- The catalog offers high-quality study materials
- Students can access millions of documents on any academic discipline.
- 5 different kinds of scholarships to students worth $5,000 annually until graduation.
- Students can gain access to Course Hero materials for free by contributing study material
WEAKNESSES
- Low pay for tutors
- High premium membership cost
- Tutors claim their account gets suspended if even a single student complains
If you are struggling with strict deadlines or last-minute assignments, don’t stress out. Course Hero is here for you to help you manage with all your homework assignments and prepare you for your exams.
Check out our Course Hero review to see how you can benefit from it!
What Is Course Hero and How Does It Work?
Course Hero is an education technology website founded by Andrew Grauer, a graduate of Cornell University. It provides access to homework assignments, class notes, textbook answers, old tests, lesson plans, interactive flashcards, and test study guides. Using Course Hero’s platform, students can form study groups where they can share their files and brainstorm. Moreover, they can also browse the database for resources, take complete online courses, and receive online tutoring.
Let’s find out the pros, cons, key features, and pricing for their service. You can then decide upon the answer to the question “Is CourseHero worth it?” for yourself.
Plans & Pricing
Since Course Hero is a crowdsourcing education technology platform, it comes with free subscription options that involve uploading content, becoming a tutor, or referring another person to the site, all of which unlocks resources. However, according to verified Course Hero reviews, this provides limited access to the study material. But if you pay for premium services, you can get instant access to all the materials.
There are 3 course hero subscription price options available:
- Annual membership: $9.95 per month which is billed in one advanced installment of $119.40.
- 3-month membership: $19.95 per month which is billed in one advanced installment of $59.85.
- Monthly membership: $39.95 per month.
The Monthly Membership allows users to ask up to 10 Tutor Questions, the 3-month Memberships comes with 20 Tutor Questions while the Annual Membership grants users up to 40 questions.
As you can see, if you opt for the course hero annual membership, you will save more money over the course of the year. Comparing it to the 3-month membership, the annual membership will cost you $120 less per year. Meanwhile, the monthly membership costs four times as much as the monthly payment of an annual membership.
A student who is always on the lookout for new study materials but does not have access to physical libraries or resources can opt for the annual membership. However, many students may not want to avail themselves of the service for that long.
If you are simply facing a rough patch in your current semester, opting for the 3-month membership provides the most value, according to Course Hero reviews by students.
In contrast, the monthly membership course hero price is a bit on the high side so it may only be appropriate for students who are facing a one-time study emergency.
Finally, if the plans and pricing are past your budget but accessing those documents is of paramount importance for your studies, you may want to consider getting a no-interest credit card to cover your membership fees.
Refund Policy
Course Hero has a great refund policy. If this is your first time using Course Hero and you found out that your GPA has dropped compared to the former semester, Course Hero will offer you a full refund. To get the refund, provide the support team with copies of your transcript.
You can also cancel your subscription at any time.
Course Hero Key Details
In this CourseHero.com review, we focused on highlighting the key features and services that are offered.
Unlock Million of Documents
With Course Hero, you can unlock notes, essays, study guides, lab reports, and homework help, and gain access to them throughout the time that you are subscribed to the service. Most documents allow you a brief preview of the content so that you can be sure that this is what you want to download. To find your research and study materials, you can search for relevant queries on the Course Hero’s search bar or browse by subject, book, or school.
By sharing your own study materials, you can also earn tutor questions to get academic assistance from Course Hero’s online tutors. Course Hero also allows you to rate the tutors and based on their ratings, tutors can get more students in the future.
Offers Practice Problems
Course Hero uses its database of academic materials to form its own practice problems. The questions come in sets. Once a set is completed, you can repeat it by clicking restart if necessary. Once you have successfully completed a problem set, you can also go forward to finish a new set of questions.
24/7 Tutors
Tutors are fellow Course Hero users who get paid to help you. According to a Course Hero tutor review, top tutors have the potential to earn as much as $500 every week.
Not surprisingly, teachers from all over the world are migrating to e-learning platforms which gives them not only teaching liberty but an opportunity to make additional money as well.
If you want to get personalized help from an online tutor, you need to first earn tutor questions. To do this, you need to create an account and upload your original study materials. Then just ask your question, select the subject, and a tutor will help you out. Once your tutor has successfully helped resolve your query, you can rate them. However, if the tutor is unable to help you out, you can get your tutor’s question back and try asking another tutor.
Textbook Solutions
Course Hero offers a new feature, which helps with getting solutions and explanations for different activities, books, and questions.
As it is a new feature, the catalog may be a bit limited, however, they are constantly improving. Thanks to this Course Hero feature, you can find help and solutions for nearly any subject that you’ll have in college, so it’s a big plus.
Scholarship
If you need help going to college, you can rely on Course Hero to help you out. A typical Course Hero scholarship review shows that these scholarships are easy to apply for if you meet the service’s requirements. Most scholarships only require short answers, although there are some that will require you to submit an essay. Currently, Course Hero is offering five different types of scholarships, including Veteran Hero Scholarship, Rise Up First-Generation Scholarship, Community Hero Scholarship, High School Super Senior Scholarship, and Hero Student Scholarship. However, if you do not qualify for a Course Hero scholarship, there are student credit cards you can use as an alternative.
Usability
An education platform is only good as long as it is comfortable to use. If it is too convoluted or requires a learning curve, students may feel they are wasting precious time just learning how to access the service. This can be a big turn-off for them.
Interface & Ease of Use
We have also considered interface and ease of use when creating our Course Hero review. The platform is comfortable and quite intuitive with flawless functions. Even people who use the platform for the very first time will find it easy to navigate.
Mobile Accessibility
According to smartphone statistics, mobile phones are slowly but surely replacing personal computers. Course Hero has also developed its iOS and Android mobile apps for people who want to access study material on the go via their smartphones or tablets.
Help & Support
To contact Course Hero’s customer support team, you will need to fill out an online form that will ask you what they can help you out with, your contact details, and any other additional information that you would like to contribute. The staff is very helpful and offers detailed answers to your queries, according to the average Course Hero customer service review.
Aside from this, they have a knowledge center where you can read in-depth articles about how to get started, how to get payments and refunds, about academic integrity and their educators.
Unfortunately, Course Hero does not offer a phone or live chat option which would have made working with them much easier but could possibly cause a poor customer experience. As stated in the customer service statistics, bad customer service costs US businesses $1.7 trillion. A bit expensive, isn’t it?
| Pros | Cons |
| Huge catalog | High premium membership cost |
| Quality study material | Low pay for tutors |
| Frequently updated content | |
| Scholarship options | |
| Free membership, when contributing study materials |
Course Hero User Reviews and Testimonials
Course Hero’s rating with Better Business Bureau is A+, and it has over 24 million students and tutors on its network. With annual revenue of $100 million, Course Hero is one of the biggest names in education technology in the market. However, like all services, it has its good and bad days.
Here is one Course Hero online prep test review:
Positive Course Hero Reviews
“There are a lot of different study features which makes it great for doing homework and revision. You can get help with homework on topics that have little material from tutors. You can get multiple answers which adds perspective to your problem.
Overall, I think CourseHero is a good study tool. It is easy to navigate around and get assistance with material on different topics.”
Neeraja M. from GetApp, 08/2021
Negative Course Hero Reviews
Some Course Hero complaints are related to its help and support service:
“Every time I upload documents it takes several days (a lot longer than their claimed 24-hour period) for me to receive my unlocks. Whenever I try to contact customer support, they always pretend that it’s because I didn’t upload enough documents even though my account says I uploaded 10 documents.”
Jimmy V. from Sitejabber, 10/2021
Course Hero Alternatives
There are several other sites that offer similar services to Course Hero. The most notable ones are:
StudyBlue is a collaborative learning platform that helps people gain knowledge in any subject they want. Students also have the option to connect with others who are studying the same subjects through a library of over 250 million pieces of user-generated material.
Compared to Course Hero, some students claim StudyBlue has a better support team and meets requirements better.
OneClass is similar to Course Hero as you can find course-specific study tools that can help you learn efficiently. However, some reviews claim that OneClass offers better quality academic materials as it motivates its note-takers with the chance to earn $470 per course by adding top-quality study resources to the site.
GradeBuddy is a service where students can find lesson notes on a large range of courses that are taught in American universities. Course Hero students say in their reviews that although its services are pretty similar to Course Hero, its subscription fees are more affordable, and students have the option to preview 20% of any content before they buy it.
Summary
Course Hero is a wonderful education technology service that enhances a student’s learning experience. According to verified Course Hero reviews, its best feature is that students can access a huge repository of study material through its free options, by uploading documents or becoming a tutor.
Even though there are people who are concerned that Course Hero promotes cheating, using it isn’t any different from forming a study group or getting a tutor to help you with your lessons. For students who are looking for research material or struggling with their studies, Course Hero is a great option. On the other hand, for parents on the lookout for a means to track their child’s learning, parental software may be the perfect solution.
FAQ
When they are thinking about using the service, a lot of people ask the question, “Is Course Hero legit?” The answer is that it is indeed a legitimate site. As a crowdsourcing site (users are the ones who provide the study material), Course Hero has to be legitimate, otherwise, it would fail. Considering that 24 million people use this platform, it looks as if many people find it both useful and trustworthy.
Course Hero does not enable its students to cheat. It is created on the same concept as a study group where students come together, share notes with each other, and exchange ideas. Additionally, Course Hero’s policies do not tolerate cheating, copyright infringement, or plagiarism, and they permanently ban anyone who violates these rules.
This Course Hero review wouldn’t be complete without explaining what Course Hero’s policy is regarding cheating. According to Course Hero’s rules, cheating entails submitting someone else’s work under your own name, uploading lecture recordings from the same term you are currently studying in, using the service’s materials when the student is told not to get any outside help, and violating the honor code of schools or instructors.
ABOUT AUTHOR
I am a curiosity-driven creature searching for answers — and questions — in the digital realm. From marketing through online business creation to software tools — I am fascinated by everything that can make life easier. When not looking for meaning, yoga and good food keep me grounded.
