Translated material
Andrey Lankov. Higher education in Korean
An extremely respectful attitude towards education has been characteristic of Korea, as well as other countries of the Far Eastern civilization, since ancient times. This attitude was not, of course, the result of some special innate curiosity of the Koreans, Chinese or Vietnamese. It was formed on a completely material basis. For centuries, in the countries of the Far East, the most direct and most honorable path to advancement through the bureaucratic ladder, that is, to wealth and privilege, ran through the system of state examinations. Such a system functioned for almost two millennia, and during this time a clear association between education on the one hand, material success and social status on the other was established in the mass consciousness. Although Korean society has undergone enormous changes over the past century, attitudes towards education have generally remained the same.
In recent decades in Korea, possessing a university degree has been a necessary and sufficient condition for entering the ranks of the “middle” class. Over the past few years, this situation seems to be beginning to change. A university diploma, while remaining a necessary condition for entering the middle class, ceases to be a sufficient condition. The number of university graduates is very large and is growing much faster than the number of vacancies corresponding to their qualifications. Therefore, a diploma from a third-rate university is no longer a firm guarantee of entry into the ranks of the middle class, and an increasingly visible, albeit small, portion of holders of such “low-quality” diplomas is forced to take up working positions.
Korean society is distinguished by considerable rigidity; social advancement is possible only along one of the formalized hierarchical ladders, and only the holder of a university diploma can step on any of them. There are practically no workarounds; in Korea, the beloved hero of modern American cultural mythology is impossible - a brilliant student kicked out of his first year, who later became a millionaire. A person deprived of that “start in life”, which is a diploma, is doomed to perform low- and semi-skilled physical labor. Married women in Korea do not work, but a diploma is also necessary for them: a girl who has not received a higher education has no chance of marrying the lucky owner of a university diploma. Even if such an educated young man likes her, you can be sure that: a) his parents will not consent to such a misalliance; b) he will not disobey the parental prohibition.
It's not just about prestige: pay also depends heavily on the formal level of education. In recent years, the gap between the average wages of people with different levels of education has narrowed, but still remains quite noticeable. In 1990, persons with incomplete secondary education (from 6 to 9 grades) received on average 1.62 times less than their peers with secondary education (12 grades), and those, in turn, received 1.85 times less by salary level for university graduates 1 .
The university system in Korea plays the role that in ancient times was assigned to state examinations for bureaucratic positions. It is therefore not surprising that enormous importance is attached to entrance exams to universities. The entire school system of the country is aimed primarily at preparing students to pass entrance exams. It would not be a great exaggeration to say that in Korea a person’s fate is largely determined by how he worked (that is, engaged) at the age of 12-17 years. Adolescence, which in most countries is associated with a carefree pastime, for Korean children is a time of exhausting work. It is no coincidence that you rarely see teenagers on the streets of Korean cities - they study: first at school, and then at countless courses and electives. According to the Korean Ministry of Education, 58.7% of high school students spend an average of 11 hours a day in school. In terms of the time a high school student spends in school, Korea exceeds the United States by two times, and Japan by one and a half times. 2 . But we also need to take into account continuous classes on courses and individual work with tutors! However, this approach is understandable. There will most likely no longer be a chance to catch up with what was lost in these years. If a teenager fails to prepare for exams at a sufficiently good level, he will not be able to enter a prestigious university, and without being a graduate of a leading university, he will never be able to count on being hired by a good company (in the HR departments of leading companies countries with graduates of second- or third-rate universities, most likely, simply will not talk). Once a person finds himself in a secondary position in a secondary company, he has virtually no chance of getting out of there until the end of his life.
Test preparation has become an entire industry that employs tens of thousands of people. For the Russian reader, two important caveats should be made here. Not a single university preparation center gives “guarantees” of admission. The money given to the tutor is not a disguised form of bribe, and there are no university professors among the tutors at all: this is prohibited, and none of the Korean professors will violate this prohibition, risking their position and (considerable) salary. However, for parents, additional classes turn into a considerable burden, including financial. You still have to do this: a Korean without a diploma is by definition a loser, and parents are ready to do anything to avoid such a fate for their children.
I would like to cite a funny and very apt sketch by an American journalist of Korean origin, who, in one of his essays about the life of the South Korean capital, describes the scene in the subway as follows: “At the next station, the carriage is filled with schoolgirls in uniform. Here is one of them. She is glad that she wrote the test well in math. But her neighbor is crying because her writing was bad, and her mother will be very angry. She thinks that because of today's test, her average score will be so low that she will no longer have a chance to get into Seoul National University. This means that she will never be able to get a good job and make a lot of money or, at worst, marry a Seoul State graduate who will make a lot of money for her. She thinks that her life is ruined. How is it all really sad! She's only 13 years old" 3 . Despite the obvious irony, in essence everything is true: the tough marathon of preparation for entrance exams, which schoolchildren are drawn into from the age of 11-12, and the cult of higher education, which alone gives hope for a serious career and material success, and the special status of Seoul State University , admission to which for young Koreans is the same dream as success in exams for an official position was for their great-great-grandfathers, and even the habit when choosing a bride or groom to pay special attention to the university from which they graduated.
At the same time, the Korean education system is characterized by consistent egalitarianism, the desire to give all applicants equal chances. The possibility of success, as is believed in Korea, should depend to a minimal extent on the financial situation of the family or even the place of residence of the future applicant; the main (and ideally the only) criterion should be his personal knowledge and abilities. This explains the periodic bouts of struggle with both individual tutoring and university preparation courses, and in general a rather suspicious attitude towards any kind of elitism in secondary education. The Korean Ministry of Education is striving hard to ensure that students in all schools in the country follow the same programs and the same textbooks, and suppresses attempts to create elite schools much more harshly than it was done in its time in the Soviet Union. In many ways, this consistently egalitarian approach reflects the traditional Confucian ideal of meritocracy (“rule by the best”). The Confucian tradition was suspicious of hereditary privileges; it was believed that each new generation must anew prove its right to join the elite and that, in principle, anyone could earn this right.
Although Korea as a whole can hardly be called a corruption-free society, college admissions are remarkably fair. There is nothing that even remotely resembles the notorious Russian “blat”. In those rare cases when admission through cronyism does occur, this is fraught with a serious scandal and tough measures from the authorities, and the most energetic investigation is demanded... by the students themselves of the university where a similar incident occurred. The fact is that rumors about allegedly taking place at a particular university through bribes or acquaintances extremely undermine the reputation of the university and, therefore, reduce the chances of its graduates getting a decent place. However, these cases remain isolated.
In addition, tuition fees at Korean universities are relatively low (from $1,500 to $4,500 per year), and in Korea there is no direct connection between the prestige of a university and its tuition fees. Quite the contrary: studying at private universities, which are inferior in prestige to public universities, costs approximately twice as much (on average $3,000 versus $1,500). Seoul National University, the national pride and dream of hundreds of thousands of ambitious young people and their parents, is one of the cheapest, while many third-rate provincial universities charge many times more for tuition. This system was made possible thanks to government subsidies, which are received mainly by leading universities. The American idea that education is a commodity, and the better it is, the more money should be demanded for it, definitely did not take root in Korea (as in other countries of the Far East).
The organizers of the Korean higher education system managed to achieve the solution to the task that Korean society and the Confucian tradition set for them, and to provide representatives of all social and property classes of the country with approximately equal chances of entering the university. This is not only my personal impression - the Koreans themselves perceive the situation the same way. This is evidenced, in particular, by the results of a recent sociological survey. According to him, only 8.8% of respondents believed that there was “great inequality” in access to education in the country, while 26.5% and 41.9% spoke about “slight inequality” and “equality” in this area % respectively. It is significant that among the same respondents, 24.8% thought that there was “great inequality” before the law in Korea, and only 13.9% believed that there was also “equality” in this area (they spoke of “some inequality” before the law 32.6% of respondents). Thus, it should be assumed that the respondents’ assessment of the situation with education is quite objective, and not dictated by blind trust in official propaganda 4 .
A decisive role in determining the fate of the applicant is played by the national exam in the main subjects of the school curriculum, held once a year at the end of November. Since the academic year in Korea begins in the spring, on March 2, the enrollment period there falls into the winter. The national exam is mainly attended by high school students, but graduates of previous years can also take it if they intend to try to enter a university this year. All schoolchildren take the exam at the same time, at specially equipped examination points, and the tasks that are offered to schoolchildren are the same throughout Korea. The examinee is expected, first of all, to possess a large amount of information and standard methods for solving problems (a rather uncreative approach, I must admit).
To ensure conditions for the successful conduct of the national exam, emergency measures are being held throughout the country on this day. On the day of exams, in accordance with special government orders, the number of trains in the metro increases, and in the morning all capable buses are put on the line. The traffic police are on high alert. All large firms are advised to delay the start of the working day by one hour to reduce the load on transport, which will transport more than a million schoolchildren and their parents that morning. At the same time, all aircraft flights are prohibited throughout the country at a predetermined time. The reason for this ban is that the noise of flying airplanes can interfere with schoolchildren's ability to write dictations and do exercises on listening comprehension of the English language. Of course, all over the country, both Korean dictation and English exercises begin at the same time, minute to minute (another example of the standardization and egalitarianism of the Korean school), and at that very moment Korean aviation finds itself grounded for an hour or an hour and a half 5 . In general, the events border almost on introducing a state of emergency in the country on the day of exams...
Servants of all kinds of cults, from Protestant preachers to shamans, also make a lot of money in the weeks leading up to the exam. Crowds of middle-aged women - mothers of applicants - flock to churches of all religions (sometimes, in accordance with the traditions of Far Eastern religious syncretism, many of them, for greater effect, visit temples of several religions at once).
The number of places in each specialty (that is, what is called an “admission plan” in Soviet/Russian universities) is determined by the Ministry of Education. Without the permission of the ministry, which is very, very difficult to obtain, it is impossible to open a new specialization or change the number of students in an existing one, and private universities (which are the majority in Korea) in this regard also depend on the ministerial authorities, just like public ones. The point here is that universities strive to increase the number of students, since this increases their prestige and income, while the Ministry fears that university leaders, if given free rein, will, like their counterparts in some other countries, accept everyone whoever agrees to pay. This would result in college degree inflation, which Korea is trying to avoid.
However, under pressure from public opinion, the ministry is gradually making concessions and increasing enrollment in universities. As a result, by the way, over the last decade, Korea has become one of the first places in the world in terms of the share of students among the population. In 1980, in Korea there were 1,701 students per 100,000 inhabitants, and according to this indicator, Korea at that time was approximately on the same level as the then Syria (1,611) or Argentina (1,748). In 1996, this figure reached 5581, according to which Korea was far ahead of most Western European countries (Italy - 3103, Switzerland - 2066 France - 3600), and generally reached the level of the United States (5339 in 1995) - a recognized world leader in the field of mass higher education 6 .
The presence of a fixed admission plan determined by the ministry leads to the fact that competitions in all Korean universities and in all specialties are approximately the same, but the passing score differs greatly. The maximum possible score on the national exam is 200 points (the sum of all subjects), but it is almost impossible to get it. In order to have a chance of success when entering one of the 4-5 leading universities, you need to score at least 170 points (about 3% of applicants succeed); for a third-rate provincial university, about 130 points are enough, and for the so-called colleges (universities with shortened two- or three-year program) you can get in with 100 points.
Interestingly, attitudes towards women's higher education in Korea have undergone major changes in recent years. Just 20 years ago, a university degree was not compulsory even for girls from the middle bourgeoisie, and in 1977, only 33% of parents surveyed said that they would like to give their daughters a higher education. If we consider that for sons this figure was then 55.5%, then there was a serious gap. However, just 13 years later, in 1990, Koreans already believed that higher education was equally necessary for both women and men. A university diploma was considered necessary for their daughters by 61.3%, and for sons by 61.9% of respondents 7 . Of course, it cannot yet be said that complete equality has been achieved in this area. The desire to educate daughters is rather theoretical in nature, but when it comes to practice, sons are given clear preference during the pre-exam marathon years; at home they are surrounded by much more care and much more resources are spent on them than on daughters busy preparing for admission. However, this is quite understandable: Korea remains a country of housewives, marriage in most cases means leaving work, so for women, a diploma in most cases is still only an important element of the dowry, while for men it is a pass to the “middle class” and livelihood.
In total, there were 350 higher education institutions in Korea in 1999. Officially, there are 5 types of universities in the country (not counting military and religious educational institutions). These included universities, colleges, teachers' institutes, open universities and correspondence universities.
Types of Korean educational institutions and number of students (1999)| ═ | Number of universities | Number of students |
| University | 158 | 1 587 667 |
| Colleges | 161 | 859 547 |
| Correspondence University | 1 | 316 665 |
| Teachers' institutes | 11 | 21 323 |
| Open Universities | 19 | 158 444 |
Data from the National Statistical Office KOSIS database
The highest rung on this hierarchical ladder is occupied by universities with a 4-year period of study, which will mainly be discussed. A university graduate has the right to enroll in a master's program, where he continues his studies for another two years. Teachers' institutes that prepare their students for future work in schools are also close to universities. A special role is played by the correspondence university in Seoul, the only correspondence university in the country. “Open universities” have similar tasks, which can only be attended by those who are already working in production, and in which there are no entrance exams (some kind of analogue of Soviet technical colleges). A step below are colleges that are somewhat reminiscent of Soviet technical schools (although in reality they are modeled after American Junior Colleges). College education lasts two or, less often, three years, and their main task is to prepare skilled workers or low-level office employees (as well as their future wives, if we are talking about students). Theoretically, after graduating from college, a student can try to enroll directly into the second or third year of university (and not necessarily in the same specialty) by passing special transfer exams, but in practice this happens quite rarely.
Unlike secondary schools, Korean universities differ sharply from each other both in terms of education and, most importantly, in the status that their graduates can expect in the future. Like Japan, Korea has a clear hierarchy of higher education institutions. This hierarchy is not formally enshrined anywhere, but it is generally known, strictly observed and very rarely challenged.
At the very top of the hierarchical pyramid is Seoul National University, officially founded in 1946 on the basis of the Gyeongsong Imperial University, which operated under the Japanese (in colonial times, Seoul was officially called Gyeongseon). It must be said that the very idea of the special prestige of the capital's state university came to Korea from Japan; the cult of Seoul State University, which amazes any foreigner, is a copy of the attitude towards the Tokyo Imperial (after the war - State) University.
The second echelon is formed by several leading private universities in the capital. These, of course, include Korea and Yonsae Universities, which have been vying for the unofficial title of "Korea University #2" for decades, as well as Ewha Women's University. Pohang Polytechnic Institute and 2-3 other Seoul universities also sometimes enroll themselves in this group, but their claims are not recognized by everyone.
The third category includes numerous private universities in Seoul, numbering about thirty. Provincial state universities have approximately the same status. Finally, the fourth, largest and least prestigious category is formed by provincial private universities.
Korean universities fully justify their name and are universal educational institutions, and this applies to both universities themselves and two-year colleges. Specialized universities exist, but their number is small, and their status, with some exceptions, is not very high. A typical large Korean university has ten to twenty faculties, which, following the American model, are usually called “colleges” (Korean taehak). Some provincial universities may not have colleges, and they consist directly of departments (Korean hakkva), but such a structure exists only in the smallest universities. A university usually has faculties of natural sciences, one or more engineering and technical departments, medicine, law, history and philology (sometimes there may be a separate department of foreign languages), music, and fine arts. Many universities also include a department of home economics, which is designed to train especially qualified (more precisely, simply certified) housewives, usually girls from wealthy families. Two-year colleges do not have separate faculties; they consist directly of departments.
Like the Japanese, Koreans when finding employment, establishing personal and business connections, etc. pay attention to the prestige not so much of the profession, but of the university from which their future employee, partner or son-in-law graduated. For Korean applicants, it is important to enroll in a good university, and which faculty or department is a secondary matter. Most university graduates, not without reason, are confident that they will not have to work in their specialty after graduation anyway. After spending 4 years in the department of sociology, Thai philology or art history, a typical Korean then goes to work for a company whose field of activity has nothing to do with his formal specialty. Neither specialty nor even academic success are usually taken into account when finding a job; only the prestige of the university is truly important (although, of course, there are exceptions to this rule - doctors, for example, or engineers, as a rule, work in their specialty). It is believed that if a person manages to get into Ense or Kore, he can cope with any job, but there is still nothing to expect from a graduate of a provincial university in the province, no matter what marks he has on his diploma. Therefore, the lucky person who managed to get into Seoul National University can consider that he has almost ensured success in life. Even if he is not very lucky, his career will still almost certainly be more enviable than what even a very successful graduate of a provincial university can hope for.
For graduates of prestigious universities, their career is also made easier by the fact that graduates of one university form a cohesive and hierarchical (earlier graduates have an advantage over later ones) corporation, the members of which provide each other with considerable assistance in a variety of issues, but primarily in employment and career . This is especially true for the students of about half a dozen leading universities, which are represented in large numbers in the Korean business, political and scientific elite (strictly speaking, this elite consists almost of them alone!). Lifelong membership in such a corporation, which is guaranteed by the very fact of admission to a prestigious university, provides invaluable benefits.
Once the “exam marathon” (often referred to as “exam hell” in Korea) has been completed and the young man or woman has finally become a university student, they can breathe freely. Korean students, to put it mildly, are not particularly enthusiastic about their studies. The student years in the life of a young Korean present a striking contrast to his school years, which were filled with desperate, exhausting work. At university you can relax for a while and take a breather after hard school years. Professors treat this traditionally sanctioned behavior quite liberally and, as a rule, do not burden students with unnecessary demands. Expulsion for academic failure remains an extreme rarity in Korean universities, homework and laboratory work are small in volume, compulsory reading is limited, and cheating during exams is frowned upon. The timetable adopted at Korean universities also has a chilling effect on students: summer holidays last from June 20 to August 25, and winter holidays from December 10 to March 2. If we take into account the absence of classes on Saturdays, a large number of holidays, a week-long festival held at each university once a year, during which classes are actually not held, as well as various irregular events, it turns out that Korean students study only 140-150 days a year , and the remaining 200-210 days are indulged in rest in a wide variety of forms.
The university period in the life of most Koreans is a kind of breath of freedom. The Korean school with its strict discipline and drill has been left behind, and family pressure has largely weakened: a student often lives in a dormitory or rents a room. For the first time in his life, a young man or girl finds himself in the company of peers, relatively free from hierarchy and control from anyone. At the same time, most students know that this freedom will not last forever: it is no coincidence that Korea has the longest working week among developed countries. Therefore, most students strive to use the four years of university freedom, as they say, one hundred percent. Club and circle activities are extremely developed in Korean universities, and they take up more time from a typical student than the actual classes.
In the student environment of the 80s, the tone was set by political activists and participants in numerous underground Marxist and communist circles. However, the crisis and collapse of the world socialist system in the early 1990s, as well as the obvious successes of democratization in South Korea (achieved not without the influence of student protests in 1986-87), led to the fact that interest in politics among the majority of students became quickly disappear. In the late 90s, radical leftist organizations continued to operate in universities, but aerobics classes or just noisy drinking bouts now find more fans than demonstrations or meetings of study groups for the works of Marx and Althusser.
However, one cannot overestimate the depth of politicization of Korean students even in the 1980s, when at many top universities a student who openly declared the acceptability of capitalism and his solidarity with the existing regime automatically became an outcast among his comrades. Even in those now almost epic times, graduating from university almost always meant a departure from any political activity. Radicalism almost inevitably came with entering the workforce or, for women, marriage.
Of course, television people loved (and still love) to show student demonstrations, since they, especially when filmed skillfully, actually look very impressive: clouds of tear gas, red banners, armored police (by the way, mostly consisting of those students called up there for military service). Such pictures, however, largely confuse foreign television viewers, who do not understand how small student activists have become in the last 5-6 years, how local all these actions are, and how large the share of playful, theatrical elements is in them.
However, in Korean universities, not only memories, but also traditions of student activism have been preserved from the times of battles. The student council, completely independent of the administration and sometimes in quite hostile relations with it, is a great force with which everyone at the university has to reckon, including the teaching staff.
University teachers are held in exceptional esteem in Korea, for a number of reasons. Let's start with the fact that the Korean professor is, if not rich, then at least a very wealthy person (which usually cannot be said about his Western colleague): the young assistant's salary after taxes is more than 2.5 million won ($2500) and thus one and a half times higher than the average Korean one. Over the years, his salary increases by two or even three times and becomes very significant by the standards of any country. In addition, a university professor has a vacation, absolutely fantastic by Korean standards - almost five months, and his workload during working hours cannot be called particularly large either - usually no more than ten lecture hours a week. Most Koreans have annual leave of no more than a week, and they spend 9-10 hours a day at work.
However, all these material benefits are by no means the main reason for the respect with which professors and teachers are surrounded in Korea. After all, there are much more profitable areas of activity: the income of an average businessman is significantly higher than the salary of a successful professor. The reasons for the Korean attitude towards professors lie, first of all, in the peculiarities of Korean traditional culture, which to this day remains fundamentally Confucian. The old principle “Sovereign, teacher, father are one and the same,” formulated back in “Ili,” remains in force and, combined with the Confucian cult of education, creates that specific atmosphere in which Korean university teachers live and work. When it comes to the educational system of other countries, Koreans often notice with amazement that the status of a university professor in most developed countries is not very high and is not fundamentally different from the status of any other employee of similar position and qualifications. Indeed, a situation that is simply unthinkable from a Confucian point of view. For decades now, public opinion polls have shown that professor is one of the most prestigious professions in Korea (in prestige surveys, professors are left behind doctors, businessmen, and television stars 8 ). It is no coincidence that in Korea even artists - artists, singers, musicians, not to mention writers - strive to occupy an official professorial position and, when meeting them, introduce themselves as “Professor X” and not as “Writer X”. Of course, many of their colleagues around the world are engaged in teaching, but for a Russian it would still be strange to hear such addresses as “Professor [Svyatoslav] Richter” or “Professor [Elena] Obraztsova” or “Professor [Viktor] Astafiev.” In Korea, this is par for the course.
The attitude of students towards the teaching staff at Korean universities is extremely respectful. The extreme respect for the Teacher, brought up over thousands of years of Confucian civilization, is also manifested here. When meeting a professor, students stand up, bow from the waist, smokers frantically snatch cigarettes from their mouths, since smoking in the presence of a senior is not customary. Of course, students discuss individual professors among themselves and are sometimes very critical, but this does not affect their attitude towards teachers as a whole. In turn, professors should provide their students with all kinds of assistance, and not only academic, and not only a current student, but also a long-time graduate can seek such help.
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The past half-century has seen an explosive expansion of higher education around the world, but even so, Korea stands out for its unusually high proportion of college-educated youth. Despite all the shortcomings of the education system, this circumstance, naturally, greatly contributes to Korean economic growth. Having a diploma is a prerequisite for any career, and the dream of giving their children the best possible education is cherished by families from all walks of life. Education in Korea is a ticket, if not to the ranks of the elite, then at least to the middle class, the main channel of social mobility. However, Korean higher education is both egalitarian and elitist. On the one hand, the Korean government has consistently, consciously and generally successfully pursued a policy of “equal opportunity” in access to higher education. Admission to a university depends primarily on the applicant’s performance and talent, and not on his financial capabilities or family connections. On the other hand, Korean universities form a clear hierarchical pyramid, and, so to speak, the “quotation” of diplomas from different universities (both in the labor market and in society as a whole) can be very, very different. At the same time, sad as it may be, university academic successes do not play a special role: everything is determined by the very fact of admission (or, conversely, non-admission) to a prestigious university.
Notes:
1 Tosi kagye enbo (Annual report on the budget of the urban family). - Seoul, "Kenzhe kyekhvekwon", 1986, p.239.
2 Hum Bex. Hyundai cheongseonny egagwangwa ponsagwan (Views of modern youth on free time and social activities).//"Keyuk volbo", 1995, #4, p.37.
3 The Korean Times, March 16, 1994.
4 Han Ilchon. Hanguk sahwey pulphendyngwa henpyeon (Inequality and position in Korean society). - Seoul, "Nanam", 1992, p.148.
5 Ton'a Ilbo, November 25, 1994
6 Gukje thonggye engam: 1999 (Yearbook of International Statistics: 1999). - Seoul, "Tongyecheon", 1999, pp.366-369.
7 Hong Tusyn, Ku Haegyn. Sakhve kyechkhyn, kyegyp ron (Theory of social strata and classes). - Seoul, "Tasan", 1993, p.128.
8 Kim Kyung-dong. Hangugin kachhigwangwa sahwe eisik (Value system and social consciousness of Koreans). - Seoul, "Pakensa", 1993, p.273.