Fulbright U.S. Education Center

The Korea Times today published an interview with Vice Minister of Education Lee Ju Ho, that provides a good overview of the current administration’s education policy.  It’s goal, as the headline proclaimed, was to keep Hagwons (private institutes) at bay.  The Vice Minister was quoted as saying “Simply put, our goals are to enable students to be home by 10 P.M. rather than in cram schools, and to help them become rational thinkers rather than receptacles of rote knowledge.”   Lee, who holds a Ph.D. in economics from Cornell University is considered one of the architects of the Lee Myung Bak administration’s education policy and now leads its day-to-day operations.

The administrations reform measures are being implemented in three steps.

• First, colleges and universities are being given greater discretion in selecting new students, allowing them to decide how much to weigh the college scholastic ability (CSAT) test scores.
• This is to be followed by a reduction in the number of subjects tested on the CSAT.
• The third and final step allows schools full authority in student selection through admissions officers.

The government’s reform efforts are viewed as a remedy for the “education fever” that many people think may negatively affect the country’s future.  Currently, hagwons in Seoul are barred from offering classes after 10:00 P.M.  That ban is set to spread to the rest of the country after the Constitutional Court’s rejection of a petition against the ban.  Also, the cram schools are being closely monitored to see whether they are following guidelines on fees.  South Korea leads the world in expenditures per capita on private lessons, spending about $30 billion per year on them.

Some days ago the press reported a scandal in which a Korean language institute instructor was arrested by police after providing copies of an SAT (Scholastic Aptitude Test) test taken in Bangkok, Thailand,  via e-mail to Korean students who were to take the same test hours later in the United States.  Now The Korea Times is reporting that four more Koreans have been apprehended for attempting to leak SAT information.   Reportedly, police are widening their investigation, in cooperation with the U.S.-based Educational Testing Service, the administrator of the SAT, to check whether the four in question had previously leaked papers to “clients” at home and abroad utilizing time zone differences.

According to the Suseo police department in southern Seoul, the four –including a 36 year old SAT preparation instructor–were suspected of leaking exam sheets they obtained from a high school in Gapyeong, Gyeonggi Province, where the SAT test was administered last Saturday.

The SAT scandal is a lead item on Korean television news these days and is in all the newspapers.  For further detail, you may wish to read the Joongang Daily’s account of the latest developments.

According to an article in The Korea Times, university and college tuition in South Korea has doubled over the past ten years.  According to the government statistics agency, the tuition of state-run universities increased 116 percent from 1999 while tuition for private four year universities and two year colleges jumped 81 percent and 90 percent respectively during the period.    Moreover, the consumer price index has increased 36 percent over the past decade, imposing an even heavier financial burden on parents and students seeking higher education.  Tuition for graduate schools also surged by 114 percent for private institutions.

The steep rise began when the government gave autonomy to raise tuition to private universities in 1989 and to state-run universities in 2003.   The Ministry of Education, Science and Technology announced Thursday that it will receive applicants for the new “study now pay later” program from today through March 31.  The program provides students with long term state education loans.

English education and English testing have perennially been high profile topics for public discussion in Korea.  That, in and of itself, is not surprising in this country which has built a modern education system almost from scratch in the span of just over half a century.   However, the public discussions these days are especially intense, as outlined by a report earlier this week in the Korea Times, entitled “Can Ahn’s English Education Overhaul Succeed?”

The lead sentence of the article points out that Minister of Education, Science and Technology Ahn Byong-man has been fighting against increasing private education costs since he took office in 2008.  One key part of his effort to cut these costs is a new evaluation program for teachers.  Under his leadership, the Ministry will conduct teacher evaluation programs at all elementary and secondary schools, starting from the Spring semester this March.  Minister Ahn believes the quality of teachers is pivotal to public education and hopes it will help parents and students to break from their reliance on private education institutes or hagwons.

A second project within the Ministry aimed at containing private education costs is the development of an English proficiency exam.  Last week, Ahn announced that colleges can use the results of the state-developed English tests in selecting students from 2012, when the exam is scheduled to debut.  Ahn said, “I am trying to persuade college and university presidents to discontinue the use of TOEFL and TOEIC scores for admissions as soon as possible.”

On Monday, January 4, the first workday of the new Year, a representative of Alamo Colleges, a group of five community colleges in the greater San Antonio area of Texas, visited the U.S. Education Center.  Steven Lewis, Director of the Service, Trade and Industry Center (STIC) braved Seoul’s heaviest snowfall in a century to make the visit.  (the snow is visible in the photo accompanying this post–click on the photo to see a full size version).

Mr. Lewis met with U.S. Education Center and web team staff, including Fulbright Deputy Director Jim Larson.  He also met with Executive Director, Shim Jai Ok.

Discussions centered around Alamo Colleges Korean students, its alumni in Korea, strategies for future recruitment, and possible partnership with Fulbright’s U.S. Education Center.  It was a snowy day, but a warm start for the New Year thanks to this visit!

According to a report in The Korea Times, the government is poised to encourage Korean universities to stabilize their tuition rates, which have risen rapidly in recent years.  The Minister of Strategy and Finance said on Sunday that the Ministry is considering penalizing colleges that raise their tuition too steeply.  The penalties would involve offering less financial subsidies to the colleges or loans to their students.

During the first decade of the new millennium, tuition outgrew inflation.  The growth rate of the former hovered between 5 and 10 percent while that of the latter was in the vicinity of 3 percent.  This means students and their parents have struggled with an increased burden, with average annual tuition standing at as much as 10 million won.