Fulbright U.S. Education Center

As reported in the Korea Times, it’s easy to spot the neatly dressed kindergarteners hopping out of BMWs and Maseratis in front of the southern Seoul campus of British International Pre School (BIPS), a prestigious English-speaking kindergarten rumored to be most sought-after by the rich moms in town.

The school’s annual tuition hovers above 18 million won ($14,400) ― more than four times the tuition for public universities ― but money doesn’t seem to be the problem. It’s the competition rate.  One mother who failed to get her six-year-old son into the program says she felt defeated when she had to enroll her child in a regular neighborhood kindergarten, which typically charges 200,000 won to 400,000 won per month.

BIPS, Bambini and some 20 other English-speaking “premium” kindergartens claim to provide only the best and charge anywhere from 1.5 million to 2 million won per month.

As reported in The Korea Times, a total of 457 elementary and secondary schools across the nation have been selected as schools that will attempt to free their students from private tutoring. To do this through upgrading curricula and other programs, the schools will receive subsidies from the government.  According to the Ministry of Education, Science and Technology, about 1,000 schools had applied for the subsidy program.

The selected schools will receive an average of 130 million won ($102,000) per year ― the government plans to spend about 60 billion won on the project this year.

The “private tutoring-free schools” are expected to run tailor-made programs or after-school classes with the special budget as well as hire more teachers.

The schools are obliged to regularly survey private cram school costs of their students and report it to the ministry. Those who fail to reduce private education costs will no longer be entitled to the subsidies.

As covered by the Joongang Ilbo and other local media today,  private education institutes, or hagwon, will be banned from providing classes after 10 p.m. from today, and whistleblowers will be rewarded with cash payments.   This was announced yesterday by the Ministry of Education, Science and Technology.  An individual who reports on illegal hagwon operations will be rewarded with a maximum of 2 million won ($1,577) in total.

This measure is unprecedented, although past administrations have spent decades trying to clamp down on private education fever in South Korea.  According to the Education Ministry, education offices in each city and province will accept reports on illegal practices of hagwon. The Ministry will also install a call center for the same function.   To help ensure the effectiveness of these measures, the Ministry will hire 200 workers devoted soley to the task of cracking down on illegal hagwon operations.  The assumption is that parents who are dissatisfied with the operations or tuition fees of a particular hagwon will make up the majority of those who report violations of the new policy.

As reported by the Joongang Daily today, the government of President Lee Myung Bak, through the Ministry of Education, Science and Technology and the ruling Grand National Party, are set to release a “Road Map to Ease Private Education Costs” by the end of July.   This is the latest salvo in a perennial political battle to curb the influence of private institutes or “hagwons” in Korean education.  Reportedly the proposal will ban cram schools for elementary school children after 9:00 P.M. and for middle and high school students after 10:00 P.M.

At a meeting with ministers on June 23rd, President Lee reportedly said that “Getting rid of private education is crucial for reducing the financial burden on lower income households, but it seems hagwons have a strong lobbying capacity.”  Although Korea is expected to post negative economic growth this year, spending on private education, including hagwons and tutoring, rose to 20.9 trillion won ($16.4 billion) from 20.4 trillion won a year earlier.

An article in the Korea Times contains some valuable data showing the impact of the current global economic crisis on levels of Korean study abroad activity.  The article begins with the example of a 26-year old college student in Seoul who had originally planned for one year of English language study in Canada, but substituted three months of work-study in Australia in order to save money.

The Bank of Korea reports that the $1.35 billion sent by Korean families and companies to support their children and employees studying overseas during the January -May 2009 period was a 28.4 percent drop from the $1.88 billion sent during the same period a year earlier.  This represents the sharpest decline for the first five months of the year since 1998 when overseas educational expenses dropped 35 percent from a year earlier.  In other words, the current economic crisis is not having as much of an impact on study abroad as the 1997-98 Asian Economic crisis did.

According to the Bank of Korea, spending on overseas education during the first five months of the year has increased dramatically since the early 1990s, as the following data show:

• 1993–$114 million
• 2000–$380 million
• 2005–$1.27 billion
• 2006–$1.69 billion
• 2007–$2.01 billion