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This study raises questions about the discrepancy between the praise for Korean education by international organizations and Koreans' dissatisfaction with their education. First, the study identifies the main reason for the discrepancy as inequality at the level of higher education. To track down the formation of the current problem of educational inequality and excessive competition for status, the study evaluates the historical changes in South Korea's education system in the past several decades, focusing on the unchecked expansion of higher education. In doing so, the study shows how the aggregate decisions made by individuals and families, and the political dynamics of the past five decades have affected broad policy regarding educational stratification in South Korea. In the last section, the study presents what has been an empirical pattern of educational stratification in Korea reflecting all these social changes during the past five decades in Korea.
Keywords: inequality in higher education, higher education expansion, politicization of education, deregulation, educational stratification
Introduction
In September 2015, the World Economic Forum (WEF) published a report titled, "Inclusive Growth and Development Report 2015" and commented on South Korea's performance in education:
The Republic of Korea has a particularly strong and inclusive education system, with excellent quality and highly equitable outcomes - it has the lowest gaps in reading and math scores between students from different income levels. (Samans et al. 2015, p. 41)
Yonhap News in South Korea headlined its article on South Korea's overall performance in the report "South Korea's Economy, Top in Education, Low in Others among Advanced Economies."1 This headline can give an impression that at least South Koreans should be proud of or happy about their education system today. However, they are not. One must then wonder why South Koreans are not happy with their education system today. In order to answer the question, first we need to identify the thorniest problem of the current education system in South Korea.
South Korea's education system today has been summarized as equal at secondary level but unequal at postsecondary level (Kim 2007, p. 192). Following this observation, the general dissatisfaction of South Koreans with their education system, even if praised by others outside of South Korea, is closely connected with inequality in the postsecondary education system. In...