Tertiary Education in Korea and the False Promise of Equal Opportunity

 Literacy and the Literacy Myth:          
    On page 36 the writer refers to how society distributes education to "lower" and "higher" classes of people.  I think in Korea there has been a deliberate move away from this, possibly because of the status associated with a university education, and because the government wanted to show that this kind of education was available to everyone. As a result, many students study at lower-tier universities which will offer them very little opportunity in the job market, as hires are generally made from the top-level universities. In a discussion class about discrimination in hiring practices in the Korean job market, a student told us about her summer job vetting applications for a big company; she basically had to throw out any applicants that hadn't graduated from one of the top universities. This to me implies a false kind of freedom; everyone can get higher education, but it's actually considered worthless by those with the ability to pay salaries.
I also found this quote in an OECD report:
Furthermore, there is a general consensus that university graduates have taken jobs that were designed for college graduates, sometimes as university graduates simply apply for these lower jobs when they are unable to get better jobs, but sometimes because universities have opened baccalaureate programmes that explicitly compete with college programmes. (For example, we heard of lower-quality universities offering four-year programmes in cosmetology, which are surely jobs that should be filled by college or secondary school graduates.)
The OECD Thematic Review of Tertiary Education - Country Note for Korea

14-Feb-2007

lhttp://www.oecd.org/infobycountry/0,3380,en_2649_39263238_1_70555_119663_1_1,00.html

          On the same site this could be contrasted with the Finnish model where there are only 20 universities, which means that many students can't go to university or have to wait for a long time to be accepted. Students who instead go to Polytechnics have no waiting lists and also find jobs relatively easy after completing their studies. It would appear that a bachelor's degree, any bachelor's degree, has lost at least some of its ability to lure students away from career-oriented studies, and a lot if it has to do with the raised status of Polytechnic qualifications in Finland. 

      In conclusion, in spite of the many examples where education has been used to prevent upward mobility of populations,  tertiary preparation for the labor market might not be the time and place to  try and wipe out these differences. A society that wants to open the doors of opportunity for  all should apply quality education much earlier.