At law schools, the wealthy rule

Posted on : 2012-04-09 14:49 KST Modified on : 2012-04-09 14:49 KST
Legal profession coming to be dominated by students from privileged backgrounds

By Lee Jae-hoon and Jin Myeong-seon, staff writers

More than half the students admitted to the Seoul National University Law School over the past four years came from special purpose high schools, expensive private high schools, and public high schools in Seoul‘s prestigious Gangnam district.

Law school was originally introduced with the stated goal of training a group of legal professionals from a diverse array of social statuses, regions, and specializations. This strategy was intended to diversify the backgrounds of legal professionals in South Korea. But critics say the nationally run SNU, South Korea’s most prestigious school, which has the largest incoming class of the country’s 25 law schools, is turning into an avenue for students from wealthy backgrounds to dominate the legal profession.

According to a report on the high school backgrounds of first year SNU students, 219 of 614 places went to graduates of foreign language, science, and international high schools over the four years since 2009. The report was submitted Sunday by the Ministry of Education, Science and Technology to Democratic United Party lawmaker An Min-suk, a member of the National Assembly’s Education, Science and Technology Committee.

Another 98 students came from public high schools in Gangnam, while 19, or 3%, were from six provincial private schools.

The numbers of students from highly educated and wealthy families has increased each year. In 2009, 77 students from specialized schools were admitted to SNU, amounting to 51.3% of the total of 150. In both 2010 and 2011, 82 students from the three types were admitted, amounting to 52.9% of the 155-student incoming class each time. For 2012, the number was up to 95, or 61.7% of the incoming class of 154 students. In particular, 66 students over the past four years, more than 10% of the total, came from Gangnam’s Daewon Foreign Language High School.

Among the 266 high schools that had more than one student among the SNU law school incoming class (qualification examination graduates included), special purposes high schools accounted for eleven of the top twenty, including eight foreign language high schools and three science high schools. One expensive private high school also placed in the top twenty.

The remaining seven public high schools, not including qualification examination graduates, were primarily from wealthy areas such as the three Gangnam districts, Daegu’s Suseong District, and Bundang in Seongnam, Gyeonggi.

There has been a sharp annual rise in the number of successful SNU law school applicants from the top twenty schools, from 56 in both 2009 and 2010 to 62 in 2011 and 70 this year.

SNU chooses students with outstanding grades, a system which some argue benefits students from highly educated and wealthy backgrounds. SNU has the largest incoming class among law schools and some fear that its class-bias will make it less likely that smaller law schools will make it a priority to select students from a wide range of income backgrounds.

Sookmyung Women’s University law professor Hong Sung-soo said, “You can’t really expect a handful of the smaller law schools that can only accept 40 students to choose a more diverse range when figures show that students without money are having a tough time getting into the SNU law school, which admits 150 students.

"SNU needs to forgo its insistence on selecting students according to grades ahead of all else and increase its scholarship rates to lower the barriers to entry faced by more vulnerable applicants," Hong said.

An Min-suk said, "Despite the original aim of promoting diversity among legal professionals, law school is becoming the exclusive province of children from particular classes due to high education costs and the focus on grades in selecting students. We desperately need improvement measures to return to that original aim".

Jeong Mi-yeon (a pseudonym), a 32-year-old third-year student at SNU law school, said she has often felt out of place in her classes recently. This is because the school, which she entered in 2010 after three years of working, has admitted more and more upper-class students.

"Even up until the early 2000s when I was doing my undergraduate degree, it wasn‘t this bad," said Jeong, who graduated from a high school outside the greater Seoul area. ”I was stunned to hear that it’s more or less the same situation at most of the other elite law schools in the Seoul area.

“It feels like the SNU law school is a sample group that encapsulates the contradictions of South Korean society, where the top 20% rules over everything,” she added.

 

Please direct questions or comments to [english@hani.co.kr]

 

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