On November 10 last year, South Korea went silent. Aircraft were grounded. Offices opened late. Commuters stayed off roads. The police stood by to deal with emergencies among students who were taking their university entrance exams that day.
Every year the country comes to a halt on the day of the exams, for it is the most important day in most South Koreans’ lives. The single set of multiple-choice tests that students take on the day determines their future. Those who score well can enter one of Korea’s top universities, which has traditionally guaranteed them a job-for-life as a high-flying bureaucrat or desk warrior at a chaebol (conglomerate). Those who score poorly are doomed to attend a lesser university, or no university at all. They will then have to join a less prestigious firm and, since switching employers is frowned upon, may be stuck there for the rest of their lives. Ticking a few wrong boxes may mean that they are permanently locked out of the upper tier of Korean society.
Making so much depend on one exam has several advantages for Korea. It is efficient — a single set of tests identifies intelligent and diligent teenagers, and launches them into society’s fast stream. It is meritocratic — poor but clever Koreans can rise to the top by studying very hard. The exam’s importance prompts children to pay attention in class and parents to hound them about their homework; and that, in turn, ensures that Korea’s educational results are the envy of the world. The country is pretty much the leading nation in the scoring system run by the Organisation for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD). In 2009, it came fourth after Shanghai, Singapore and Hong Kong, but those are cities rather than full-sized countries.
Korea’s well-educated, hard-working population has powered its economic miracle. The country has risen from barefoot to broadband since 1960, and last year, despite the global slowdown, its economy grew by 6.2 percent. In the new age of the knowledge economy, education is economic destiny. So the system has had far-reaching and beneficial consequences.
Yet it also has huge costs. For a start, high school is hell. Two months before the day of his exams Kim Min-sung, a typical student, was monosyllabic and shy. All the joy seemed to have been squeezed out of him, to make room for facts. His classes lasted from 7 a.m until 4 p.m after which he headed straight for the library until midnight. He studied seven days a week. “You get used to it,” he mumbles.
His parents have spent much of Min-sung’s life worrying about his education. His father, a teacher, taught him how to manage his time: to draw up a plan and stick to it, so as to complete as much revision as possible without collapsing exhausted on the desk. His mother kept him fuelled with “delicious food” and urged him to “study more, but not too much”.
A poll by CLSA, a stockbroker, found 100 percent of Korean parents want their children to attend university. Such expectations can be stressful. In one survey, a fifth of Korean middle and high school students said they felt tempted to commit suicide. In 2009, a tragic 202 actually did so. The suicide rate among young Koreans is high: 15 per 100,000 15-24-year-olds, compared with ten Americans, seven Chinese and five Britons.
But as more and more students cram into universities, the returns on higher education are falling. Because all Korean parents want their children to go to university, most do. An incredible 63 percent of Koreans aged 25-34 are college graduates — the highest percentage in the OECD. Since 1995, there has been a staggering 30 percentage-point increase in the proportion of Koreans who enter university to pursue academic degrees, to 71 percent in 2009.
This sounds great, but it is unlikely that such a high proportion of young Koreans will actually benefit from chasing an academic degree, as opposed to a vocational qualification. A survey in August found that, four months after leaving university, 40 percent of graduates had not found jobs.
(Excerpted and adapted from The Economist)