January 24, 2007...5:15 am
The Passion of the Korean
Michael Breen takes a couple of well-aimed shots at the Korean education system:
South Koreans are expected to spend $4.57 billion on overseas education and training this year, according to a recent report. That figure represents the midpoint in a steady rise from $1.0 billion in 2000 to a forecast U.S.$10.7 billion in four years, said the report in the latest issue of Industrial Economic Research.
Many Koreans study overseas alone, living in various home stays over years.
Breen continues:
A remarkable feature of education in Korea is the contradiction between the passion for learning compared to the actual quality of the education being offered. Korean and foreign employers have been complaining for a long time that the education system does not teach people to think, only to memorize. There have been some changes, but the system still tends to produce intellectual passivity.
But the other side of this coin is that, despite the fact that modern Korea was built by people without university degrees, there is no other path to success in 21st century Korea. To do well in life, including getting a “good’’ marriage partner, an ambitious young person needs to get into a university that society believes _ for whatever obscure reasons _ to be a top one. The fact that these universities offer a mediocre education does not worry them. This situation is not so contradictory. It is rather like aspiring for a high rank in an army that is not very good at fighting wars. Yes, the army may be weak, but you only have one country and one army to choose from. People will aspire to do well in life even if the structure they are born into is ramshackle.
The irony, of course, is that if the universities were academically rigorous, they would cease to be the only means for selecting the elite. Different paths to success in Korea would open up.
Tough love by Mr Breen - although I don’t understand what different paths would open up if the unis were more rigorous. Michael Breen will be cited on this blog often - he is a venerable Korean watcher and the author of The Koreans and Kim Jong-Il: North Korea’s Dear Leader.
Michael Hurt of the Metropolitician has a great take on Korean education with a focus on academic cheating in Korea and concerns for the institutions abroad enrolling all those Korean students. I suspect that academic institutions are well-aware of this cultural difference and have weighed it against incoming revenue.
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