Education in South Korea

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Education in South Korea

Ministry of Education (South Korea)
National education budget (2016)
Budget	4.6% of GDP[1]
General details
Primary languages	Korean
Literacy
Total	100%
Male	100%
Female	100%
Primary	3.3 million[2]
Secondary	4.0 million
Post secondary	3.6 million
Attainment
Secondary diploma	98.0%[3][6][7]
Post-secondary diploma	69.8%[3][4][5]

Education in South Korea is provided by both public schools and private schools. Both types of schools receive funding from the government, although the amount that the private schools receive is less than the amount of the state schools.^[8]

South Korea is one of the top-performing OECD countries in reading, literacy, mathematics and sciences with the average student scoring about 519, compared with the OECD average of 493, which ranks Korean education at ninth place in the world.^[9][10] The country has one of the world's highest-educated labour forces among OECD countries.^[11][12] South Korea is well known for its high standards about education, which has come to be called "education fever".^{[13][14][15][16]} The nation is consistently ranked amongst the top for global education.

In South Korean society, the topic of higher education holds great significance, being seen as a cornerstone of life in the country. Education is considered a top priority for South Korean families, as success in education serves as a crucial ingredient for channeling one's social mobility to ultimately improve one's socioeconomic position in South Korean society.^[17][18] Academic success is often a source of familial pride and societal esteem in South Korea at large, where many individuals see success in education as the primary driver of upward social mobility and the gateway into the South Korean middle class. Graduating from a top South Korean university is the ultimate distinctive and distinguishing marker of prestige, societal recognition, high socioeconomic status, promising marriage prospects, and a path to a prestigious and respectable white-collar professional occupation.^[19] Many South Korean parents hold high educational expectations for their children starting from a young age, as such parents take responsibility and vital measures by actively emphasizing high academic achievement by actively monitoring their children's academic performance by ensuring that their children do well in school and earn top grades in order to qualify and secure enrollment in the nation's most esteemed universities, as gaining admission into a prestigious South Korean university is regarded as the traditional pathway that leads to an elite and well-paying professional white collar occupation. To uphold the family honor and tradition, many South Korean children are expected to go to a top university and pursue a prestigious white collar professional occupation as their future career of choice. Starting from a young age, an average South Korean child's life revolves around education as the parental demands to succeed academically is deeply ingrained in a South Korean child from an early age. Students are faced with immense pressure to succeed academically from their parents, teachers, peers, and society. This is largely a result of a society that has excessively overstressed an enormous premium on the importance of going to university, as those lacking formal university education in South Korea often face social prejudice as well as significant life-long consequences such as stagnant and lower socioeconomic status, diminishing marriage prospects, and low probabilities of securing a respectable white collar and professional career path.^[20]

In 2016, South Korea spent 5.4 percent of its GDP on all levels of education – roughly 0.4 percentage points above the OECD average.^[4] A strong investment in education, a militant drive and desire to achieve academic success, as well as the passion for academic excellence has helped the resource poor country rapidly grow its economy over the past 70 years from the effects of the Korean War.^[21] South Korea's zeal for education and its students' desires to get into a prestigious university is one of the highest in the world, as the entrance into a top tier higher educational institution leads to a prestigious, secure and well-paid professional white collar job with the South Korean government, bank, or a well-known South Korean conglomerate company such as Samsung, Hyundai and LG Electronics.^[22] With incredible pressure placed on high school students to secure places at the nation's most prestigious universities, its institutional reputation, campus facilities and equipment, endowment, faculty, and alumni networks are strong predictors of future career prospects. The top three universities in `South Korea, often referred to as "SKY", are Seoul National University, Korea University and Yonsei University.^[2][23][24] Intense competition and academic pressure to earn the highest grades throughout the arc of their schoolhood years for a young South Korean student is deeply ingrained in their psyche at a young age.^[24] Yet with only so many places at the nation's elite universities and even with a narrower bandwidth of job openings at the nation's most recognized companies, many young South Korean university graduates remain disappointed and are often unwilling to lower their expectations with regards to employment prospects with the result of many feeling as underachievers as not commensurate with the amount of effort and resources that they put in. There is a major cultural taboo in South Korean society attached to those who have not achieved formal university education, as those who don't hold university degrees face social prejudice and are often contemptuously looked down by others as second-class citizens, resulting in fewer opportunities for employment, improvement of one's socioeconomic position, and auspicious prospects for marriage.^[25]

International reception on the South Korean education system has been divided. It has been praised for various reasons, including its comparatively high test results and its major role in ushering South Korea's economic development while creating one of the world's most educated workforces.^[26] South Korea's highly enviable academic performance has gotten British education ministers actively remodeling their own curriculums and exams to try to emulate Korea's militant drive and passion for scholarly excellence and high educational achievement.^[26] Former U.S. President Barack Obama has also lauded the country's rigorous school system, where over 80 percent of South Korean high school graduates go on to enroll at a university.^[27] The nation's high university entrance rate has created a highly skilled workforce making South Korea among the most highly educated countries in the world with one of the highest percentage of its citizens per capita holding a tertiary education degree.^[3][4] Large majorities of South Korean students go on to enroll in some form of tertiary education and leave higher education graduating with a tertiary qualification. In 2017, South Korea ranked fifth for the percentage of 25 to 64-year-olds that have attained tertiary education with 47.7 percent.^[3] 69.8 percent of South Koreans aged 25 to 34 years old have completed some form of tertiary education with 34.2 percent of South Koreans aged 25 to 64 having attained a bachelor's degree which is one of the highest among OECD countries.^[3][4]

The system's rigid and hierarchical structure has been criticized for stifling creativity and innovation;^[28][29] described as intensely and "brutally" competitive,^[30] the system is often blamed for the high suicide rate in South Korea, particularly the growing rates among those aged 10–19. Various media outlets attribute the nation's high suicide rate on the nationwide anxiety around the country's college entrance exams, which determine the trajectory of students' entire lives and careers,^[31][32] though teenage suicide rates (ages 15–19) still remain below those of the United States and Canada.^[33] Former South Korean hagwon teacher Se-Woong Koo wrote that the South Korean education system amounts to child abuse and that it should be "reformed and restructured without delay".^[34] The system has also been criticized for producing a glut of university graduates competing for a limited number of open job placements, thereby creating an overeducated and underemployed labor force; where in the first quarter of 2013 alone, nearly 3.3 million South Korean university graduates were jobless, leading many graduates overqualified for lower-ranked jobs that are less prestigious and require lower levels of education.^[35] Further criticism has been stemmed for causing labor shortages in various skilled blue collar labor and vocational occupations, where many go unfilled as the negative social stigma associated with vocational careers and not having a university degree continues to remain deep-rooted in contemporary South Korean society.^{[20][36][37][38][39][22]}