hankyoreh

By Lee Jae-hoon　
　　
South Korea has the lowest percentage of students attending state and public universities or government-dependent private universities among OECD nations, a report shows. The level of government funding invested in university education was also among the lowest in the OECD.
An analysis Wednesday of a report on 2010 OECD education indicators by the Hankyoreh showed South Korea placing lowest among the 29 OECD members that submitted data in terms of the percentage of full-time registered students in 2007 and 2008 at state and public universities, including master‘s programs, with a total of just 22 percent.
Fourteen countries, including Denmark, Greece, Norway, and Canada, had 100 percent of enrolled students attending state or public universities and private universities described as “government-dependent,” meaning that 50 percent or more of their funding comes from the government. The percentage was greater than 50 percent in all countries except South Korea and Japan.
South Korea also placed near the bottom in terms of the percentage of public higher education expenditures coming from the government, with its 20.7 percent rate putting it second from last among the 26 countries that provided data. The country in last place was Chile, with 14.4 percent. Five countries, including Belgium, Finland, and Iceland, had more than 90 percent of public university education costs borne by the government, while the OECD average was 69.1 percent.
In contrast, South Korean ranked second in terms of the percentage of public university education costs paid for through household expenditures on tuition and other fees, at 52.8 percent. Once again, Chile placed highest with 79.2 percent. In the United States, which had the highest annual university tuition rates in 2009, the rate of household burden was just 34.2 percent.
At 1.9 percent, South Korea’s rate of private higher education burden relative to gross domestic product was nearly four times the OECD average of 0.5 percent.
Hwang Hui-ran, a researcher at the Korea Higher Education Research Institute, said, “The roots of the problem of lax and insular financial management by private universities lie in the failure to establish a system where the government takes responsibility for higher education with financial support, which is not the case in other OECD countries.”
“South Korea, too, needs to get away from a system centering on private universities and move to a system centered in universities for which the government takes responsibility,” Hwang said.
　　
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