Most recently, during the current global financial crisis, Korea is among a handful of major industrial nations that have continued to boost education spending, despite the recession.  The others are China, Taiwan, Germany, France and Brazil,, according to research conducted at U.C. Berkeley’s Center for Studies in Higher Education and reported in The San Francisco Chronicle.

The ratings showed that students gave higher scores to hagwon teachers for preparing them for college entrance exams, and for trying to maintain closeness with students.  Some school teachers complained about the results of KEDI’s research, suggesting it was not appropriate to compare hagwon and public school teachers since their purposes were different.

Reportedly, no foreign tutors have been caught by the authorities for violation of the Private Education law.

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.

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.

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.”

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.