This article from Education Week was written by former Minister of Education, Science, and Technology and Fulbright alumnus Byung-man Ahn, and talks about some of the issues in Korean education and the efforts to find solutions for them.

Education in the Republic of Korea

National treasure or national headache?

During the more than two years I served as South Korea’s minister of education, science, and technology, I found myself frequently astonished by the outside world’s lavish praise for our education system. President Barack Obama has often noted in speeches the enthusiasm of Korean parents for their children’s education, the high quality of Korean teachers, the number of learning hours that Korean students spend, and the outstanding educational achievements these have produced; for example, top rankings in international academic-achievement tests, and low rates of school dropouts and juvenile delinquency. As reported, in particular, Korean students ranked first in reading, first in math, and third in science in the Program for International Student Assessment among the 30 member countries of the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development that participated.

While many may look with envy at these achievements, I could not conceal my bewilderment at the fact that, within Korea, that same education system has been called the nation’s biggest problem.

The criticism has much to do with students’ quest to attend prestigious colleges and universities. The most important factor in student selection has been the College Scholastic Ability Test (Korea’s equivalent of the sat). After that come high school grades, and if a determination cannot be made on that basis, the university administers an essay-based exam or something similar and selects the students with the highest scores.

The process has led aspiring entrants and their parents to devote themselves to a style of examination preparation centered around memorization. Parents also believe that they cannot rely on public education alone to get their children into the desired colleges, leading to an enormous dependence on private education.

While Korea’s students excel at learning, they believe its purpose lies not in self-development based on personal interest or motivation, but in entrance into a highly ranked university. Students have no time to ponder the fundamental question of “What do I need to learn, and why?” They simply need to prepare for the test by learning the most-effective methods for digesting tremendous quantities of material and committing more to memory than others do.

Based on all this, the current administration of President Lee Myung-bak has focused its policy efforts on creating the type of education in which creativity is emphasized over rote learning, diversity over uniformity, and self-determined education over other-determined education.

In an effort to promote creativity, the administration has worked over the past two years to reduce the amount of material students are required to study and to reorganize educational programs so students are able to lead more-varied academic lives.

To ensure diversity in education, the administration has created “garden schools” and boarding-style high schools in agricultural communities. These are designed to encourage rural students to stay in their communities instead of moving to urban areas for educational opportunities. The president’s administration has also created a range of schools at the high school level that allow students to gain employment immediately upon graduation and enter into university later. The administration has promised to increase the number of these types of schools in the future.

Third, the government has committed to developing policies to strengthen public education to reduce Koreans’ dependency on private education. It has developed more-stringent assessments of student achievement and teacher competency. For schools that ranked low in these assessments, the Lee administration has added “honor teachers,” expanded mentoring programs for students, and provided financial support for the purchase of new educational equipment.

Finally, but most crucially, the government has instituted a college-entrance-officer system so that postsecondary admissions depend not just on the rote-learning-centered entrance exams, but also consider factors such as individual students’ talents, creativity, and growth potential. The government is working to enable this system to take root in the university community at a graduated but nonetheless rapid rate, and the University Presidents’ Association of Korea is encouraging colleges and universities to adopt this system voluntarily. I was committed to ensuring the implementation of this system from the first year of my ministerial term, and I am happy to say that it has been gaining momentum in recent years.

Our government recognizes teachers as our most valuable human resource and has dedicated massive funding to their professional development. To this end, we have opened residential teacher-training centers in school districts across Korea, where teachers can work on improving their English proficiency and refining their pedagogical skills to incorporate tasks that foster creativity and innovation among students. In addition, the government rewards teachers for pursuing graduate degrees and offers opportunities for teachers to take fully funded sabbaticals to study abroad.

These examples represent but a small portion of the educational reforms currently under way in South Korea. The common thread that runs through all of these reforms is the goal of developing an education system that values both creativity and the acquisition of necessary knowledge and skills. Between the pain of memorizing and the pleasure of creative expression, there needs to be a balance, both to develop the full potential of our students and to meet the nation’s need for a skilled workforce and a well-educated citizenry. The success of these reforms hinges, of course, on how seriously these issues are considered, how carefully educators craft their policies and practices, and how genuinely they are perceived by those directly involved in education.

This essay was adapted from a speech Byong-man Ahn gave at the Harry S. Truman Conference at the University of Missouri, in Columbia, in August 2011.

By Lee Woo-young

The government has set aside more funds for state scholarships to ease the heavy college tuition burden, allowing college students to receive loans without having to repay them before finding employment, the Education Ministry said Monday.

Increased tuition subsidies will be offered to college students through the 2012 national budget as the government added 250 billion won ($216 million) to the previous 1.5 trillion won, the ministry said.

The extra subsidies are expected to decrease nominal college tuition by 25 percent, 3 percent higher than the previous estimate when the fund amounted to 1.5 trillion won. The subsidies will be given to the bottom 70 percent income bracket, whose annual income is under 51 million won, officials said.

About 760,000 students, about 57 percent of the total, are estimated to be eligible to benefit from the subsidies.

Another 823 billion won will be spent to lower the interest rate of the national student loan by 1 percentage point to 3.9 percent and lower the minimum grade for the loan from B to C.

The government linked increased subsidies to universities’ efforts to decrease their tuition fees as well as to provide students with more scholarships. Depending on their efforts, the government will determine the amount of tuition subsidies they will receive.

About 1.7 million college students, 78 percent of the total in Korea, have applied for the state scholarship since December.

Source: http://www.koreaherald.com/national/Detail.jsp?newsMLId=20120102000769

Becoming a teacher or a civil servant is the most favored career path for South Korean high school students and their parents, a survey showed Tuesday, reflecting their desire for job security.

In a survey of 2,165 high school students across the country conducted by the education ministry, 11 percent selected teaching as their preferred future job, followed by civil service at 4.2 percent and the police force at 4.1 percent.

Explaining why they chose their future career paths, the respondents said they were influenced by their parents the most, followed by media, teachers and peers, while key factors also included their aptitude and talent, the survey showed.

In the same survey of 1,876 parents, 17.8 percent, the largest segment, preferred a government job for their children, with the next largest group of 16.9 percent wanting their offspring to become teachers. Becoming a doctor ranked third at 6.8 percent, while 4.4 percent said they would put their children’s preference first.

“As unemployment has become a nagging social problem, not only a growing number of job seekers but also high school students are looking to the public sector. It is deemed to guarantee greater job security,” said Kim Na-rah, an official at the Korea Research Institute for Vocational Education and Training.

The country’s jobless rate reached 2.9 percent in November last year, but unemployment among those aged 15 to 29 for the same month was 6.8 percent, government data showed.

Source: http://www.koreaherald.com/national/Detail.jsp?newsMLId=20120110000358

By Na Jeong-ju

The government announced a plan to overhaul the grading system for middle and high school students, Tuesday, in a bid to revamp the competition-oriented learning environment at schools.

Under the plan, the current nine-grade relative evaluation system at high schools will be replaced by a six-grade college-style absolute assessment format by 2014.

Currently, the grade of a student is decided based on his or her standing from exams in comparison to the entire student body.

Under the new system, however, the students’ scores will be marked only on an absolute scale of A, B, C, D, E, F, which is similar to the evaluation system being adopted by most colleges here, according to the education ministry.

The ministry said the change will help ease the stiff competition among students for entering college, but schools don’t agree. They claimed that the new system will prompt colleges to give more weight to their own essay tests and interviews in selecting students, jeopardizing public education and increasing students’ dependence on private tutoring.

“We will gradually introduce the new grading system at middle schools and vocational high schools beginning next year. It will be adopted by all high and middle schools by 2014,” said Ryu Jung-sup, a ministry official.

“We decided to overhaul the system because the current one is too competition-driven and puts students under a lot of stress. It is an attempt to change the learning environment for the better.”

Academic achievement gap

The official said the government will also increase courses in which students can develop their ability to think and nurture creativity, while reducing courses focused on purely academic achievement.

Some teachers alleged that the absolute evaluation system may deepen the academic achievement gap between students attending schools in big cities and those in rural areas. They also predict that the competition to enter foreign-language schools and the so-called autonomous private high schools, which have outperformed ordinary schools in academic achievement, will become fiercer.

“The new policy will make competitive schools even more competitive, but will make it more difficult for those in rural and provincial areas to attract students,” said an official of the Korean Teachers and Educational Workers’ Union.

He also forecast that prestigious colleges will increase their dependence on essay tests and interviews to choose students.

Schools have put more weight on such exams than on scores from the state-administered College Scholastic Ability Test and on academic achievements at high schools in selecting students. This year, the importance of essay tests and interviews was even greater as the CSAT was easier than in the past.

Scholars have cautioned that as an essay score has become a crucial evaluation criterion for college applicants, household spending on private education is growing further.

Source:  The Korea Times (http://www.koreatimes.co.kr/www/news/include/print.asp?newsIdx=100732)

By Na Jeong-ju

Korea ranked second among 34 OECD member nations in terms of the ratio of public education spending to the gross domestic product, according to the organization’s 2011 edition of Education at a Glance, released Tuesday.

The country spent 7.6 percent of GDP on public education ― 4.7 percent by the government and 2.8 percent by the private sector ― in 2009, much higher than the OECD average of 5.9 percent, the Ministry of Education, Science and Technology said, citing the OECD data. Iceland came first at 7.9 percent.

“The spending by the private sector on public education was the highest among OECD countries for the 11th consecutive year, indicating that Korean parents rely heavily on private tutoring for children’s education,” a ministry official said.

The annual survey was conducted on 42 countries ― 34 OECD countries plus eight non-member nations ― based on 2009 statistics.

In terms of per capita tuition needed to study at state-run and public universities and graduate schools, Korea ranked second at $5,315, followed by the United States at $6,312.

The yearly average tuition at the country’s private universities and graduate schools was at $9,586, higher than the OECD average. The figures were based on purchasing power parity (PPP), the conversion index used to compare price levels for different countries.

The survey is expected to provide a fresh leverage for the government to press ahead with its campaign to cut university tuition.

Last week, the government and the ruling Grand National Party agreed to set aside 1.5 trillion won ($1.3 billion) in next year’s budget to ease the heavy college tuition burden on households. The country is seeking to effectively cut tuition by 30 percent from the current levels by 2014.

According to the OECD survey, the ratio of scholarships to tuition at Korean schools was 6 percent, which was much lower than the OECD average of 11.4 percent. This means Korean colleges charge higher tuition fees, but pay less for scholarships than those in other rich countries.

In the category of higher education, the rate of finishing high school was 80 percent, higher than the OECD average of 73 percent.

Among the younger demographic group of from 25 to 34-year-olds, 98 percent of students finished high school and 63 percent of them went on to higher education, both of them topping the OECD rankings.

Students from foreign countries accounted for 1.6 percent of total students at higher educational institutions, much lower than the OECD average of 8.5 percent.

However, Korea has recorded the highest increase in the rate of foreign students for the past decade as schools have adopted aggressive globalization programs, according to the Education Ministry.

The number of students per teacher has been declining but still remains far higher than the OECD average. The number of students per teacher came in at 22.5 for elementary schools, 19.9 for middle schools and 16.7 for high schools, 3.2-6.5 higher than the OECD average.

Source:
http://www.koreatimes.co.kr/www/news/include/print.asp?newsIdx=94698

Korean households’ spending on education sank to a two-year low in the second quarter of this year as they faced financial difficulties amid weak economic growth, data showed Tuesday.

According to the data by the Bank of Korea (BOK), local households spent a total of 8.5 trillion won ($7.88 billion) to finance the education of their children in the April-June period, down 1.2 percent from a year earlier and the lowest since the first quarter of 2009.

Households’ inflation-adjusted education expenditures, which had increased since 1998, contracted in the second and third quarters of 2010 before bouncing back in the fourth quarter of last year and the first quarter of 2011, the BOK data showed.

According to a separate tally by Statistics Korea, households with two or more members spent a monthly average of 175,400 won in the second quarter, down 1 percent from a year earlier.

Experts said rising debts, falling income and high inflation had combined to force local households to cut back their spending on their children’s education.

As of the end of June, local household debt reached nearly 900 trillion won, with consumer prices rising an average 4.5 percent in the January-August period. (Yonhap)

Source:

http://www.koreatimes.co.kr/www/news/include/print.asp?newsIdx=94698

Jeju Island has undertaken an ambitious project to build an international education city featuring a cluster of international schools, foreign universities, business centers and tourism.

Modeled on Dubai’s Knowledge Village, the Jeju Global Education City will be home to prestigious foreign universities and programs on the 261,000 square meter site in Seogwipo, a southern Jeju city famous for tourism and business.

A unique cluster of tourism and business on the island is expected to provide tenant schools a chance to share work and collaborate effectively with many hotel chains and companies.

Divided into five zones ― school zone, university zone, culture zone, education center and business zone ― the JGEC will be supported by other facilities that assist its core function of an educational hub in Northeast Asia.

“Jeju will minimize the problems from establishing foreign branch of universities as the city is designed for education,” said Lee Seung-hoon, deputy director of the JGEC office.

“We will help foreigners here in Jeju education city live an easy and comfortable life, especially when dealing with administrative works. We will make it possible for foreigners to handle administrative works in English,” said Lee.

The city is also trying to attract Korean students who want to study overseas and is ready to provide the same academic level and living environment that they expect in English-speaking countries.

Some of the world’s most prestigious schools are expected to open after the city and an international school signed memorandums of understanding in 2009. North London Collegiate School from the U.K. and Korea International School are set to be the first to open their doors first in September this year. Branksome Hall, a girls’ private school in Canada, is scheduled to open its Korea branch in September 2012.

U.S. Noble and Greenough School and St. Albans School, both boarding schools in the U.S., already signed the MOU with the city to open branches there.

Education city officials expect that there will be about 9,000 students from elementary to secondary level with about 1,000 students graduating every year.

According to them, about 1,000 teachers are expected to work in Jeju if international schools with a total capacity of 9,000 students open in the city. And about 125,000 English-speaking teachers are needed over the next 10 years across Asia to meet the demand of international schools in the region. This means that the Jeju education city needs to produce teachers by hosting education departments of foreign universities.

Being at the initial planning stage, the JGEC plans to host 10 to 15 top global universities by 2016 under the goal of offering Korean students a viable alternative to overseas study and attracting foreigners as well to become an educational hub in Asia.

By Lee Woo-young  (wylee@heraldm.com)

http://tinyurl.com/6hlolc2

This interesting article in The Australian has interesting statistics and information about internet usage in different countries, including Korea, of course, and how this affects trends in marketing and recruitment of educational institutions.

http://www.theaustralian.com.au/higher-education/social-media-sells-education/story-e6frgcjx-1226113733750

The U.S. Education and Testing Services has made the biggest change in its GRE general test in 60 years.

Officials of the Korean branch of ETS said that the agency has advanced the test technologically with emphasis on real-world applications.

The GRE general test is the most widely adopted test for graduate admission, with 230 countries acknowledging its results.

The good news for Korean students preparing for the test is that all international students will be able to take it once a month in the same advanced format, which means Koreans don’t have to go through taking a lengthy and bulky paper-based test here or fly to Japan to take the computer test.

Only the paper-based test has been available in Korea since 2002 when the country was penalized by the ETS because students illegally shared the questions and answers with other students, according to officials.

The revised test features new questions emphasizing real-world applications, a different scoring system and a new candidate-friendly design, they said.

Students will have more flexibility to move back and forth between questions and edit or change answers ― similar to the internet-based TOEFL test.

“The launch of the GRE revised general test marks a new era in graduate and business school admission, an era that means a friendlier testing experience and even more useful results for graduate and business schools,” said David Payne, vice president of the higher education division of ETS.

Would-be graduate students have a chance to take the revised test at 50 percent discounted price from August to September. More information on the test is available at www.ets.org/gre.

By Lee Woo-young (wylee@heraldm.com)

http://www.koreaherald.com/national/Detail.jsp?newsMLId=20110817000566

Private universities in Korea are preparing for declining revenues due to a persistently low birthrate, mirroring the situation in Japan, which has seen a string of bankruptcies among private colleges due to the same problem.

According to Statistics Korea on Sunday, the number of 18-year-olds in Korea inched up from 624,000 in 2005 to 701,400 in 2010 but will start dropping this year.

Sources: “Universities Brace for Dwindling Student Numbers” The Chosun Ibo, July 11, 2011. http://english.chosun.com/site/data/html_dir/2011/07/11/2011071101097.html