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.

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.”

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.

An article in The Korea Times today notes that many new service businesses are doing well in Korea.   In particular, it observes that foreign language institutes, primarily teaching English, saw sales increase by 25.2 percent in 2008.   Online English classes saw sales rise 38.1 percent.

As reported in the Joongang Daily today, the Ministry of Education, Science and Technology has announced that applicants to foreign language high schools who say they received private education or tutoring will be disadvantaged.  This is the Ministry’s latest effort to address concerns that changes in the foreign language high school’s admission process will further overheat the private education market.   The Ministry had earlier announced that foreign language high schools would introduce an admission process that emphasized “self-study” in 2011.

Admissions officers will measure “self study” in various ways, including interviews, examination of study plans and letters of recommendation.  English listening tests, written exams and interviews asking about applicant’s knowledge of specific subjects will be banned.  The Ministry also said that applicants who report their scores for foreign language aptitude tests, such as TOEFL, will lose points.

The Korea Times this morning has a very informative article by Robert Dickey that summarizes the continuing strong influence of the university entrance exam (College Scholastic Aptitude Test) on Korean education.   Despite many efforts to change it over the years, “education inflation,” “teaching to the test” and the like persist.   This article is a good introduction to the current situation.

Some of you may be interested in the post on my Korea Information Society blog about the Ministry of Science and Technology’s plans for digital textbooks.

Read it here.

As reported in The Korea Times today, the state-run college scholastic ability test, which was administered nationwide yesterday, is generally less crucial than it was in the past.  Colleges these days use their own methods to select students for admission in advance of the CSAT.   A large number of students are accepted during an “early admissions” process and many universities require that those students submit the results of the CSAT test as a sort of “pass-fail” final requirement for admission.  For details, read the full article.

The Korea Times today reports that a consortium has been named to organize Korea’s new government-run English proficiency tests.  The Ministry of Education, Science and Technology announced Wednesday that a group consisting of the Korea Chamber of Commerce and Industry and four universities will administer the first grade-level exam of the state tests.  Grade one tests will be developed for adults seeking to attend graduate school or gain employment, while grades 2 and 3 will be used for students attending elementary to high school.

The KCCI will cooperate with Seoul National University, the organizer of the TEPS test, Hanguk University of Foreign Studies, developer of the FLEX test, Sookmyung Women’s University, organizer of the MATE test, and Korea University.