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xypher

Senior Member
Registered Member
Overspending in tutoring is detrimental to children. SK needs to enact policies to decrease the cutthroat competition in basic education.
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This is certainly an issue, China banned those cram schools but I don't think that targeting only the symptoms is useful in the long run - eventually the underlying issues like overly competitive environment will have to be addressed somehow, although that's obviously not easy and will take long time.

However, I don't think metrics from the article are really useful to determine productivity or education quality, e.g.:
It spends 40% more on a typical teenage student than Ireland yet obtains 60% less in gross domestic product per employee.
Everyone knows that most of the Irish GDP is fake in reality and driven by Ireland being a huge tax heaven. This is even confirmed by their government which uses different metrics. So whether Irish economy is really stronger and more productive than the Korean one is a big "IF" question. In terms of important high-tech industries the latter is certainly ahead.
 
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henrik

Captain
Registered Member
I used to go to Korea fairly often for business, even back around 2013 to 2015, it was clear their education system wasn't evolving and massive amounts of university graduates ended up working in coffee and fried chicken joints which were found on every city block.

Their thinking was to produce as many university graduates as possible, but their chaebols couldn't absorb them all, especially when Samsung, LG etc. were hiring more in Asia, Europe and US, and less in Korea as they expanded internationally. Tough job competition then led to uber competition at the high school tutoring level.

The thing is that way too many Koreans went into K-pop and TV series making instead. That is why Black Pink and BTS are so successful. They even won an Oscars with that Parasites movie.
 
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