Skip College is Advice for World-Beating Koreans; Increasing foreign workers in Korea

[Ambassador]

Skip College is Advice for World-Beating Koreans

Kim Hye Min boasts a 4.0 grade- point average at one of South Korea’s top colleges, a perfect score in English proficiency and internships at Samsung Card Co. (029780) and AT Kearney Inc. All of her 20 job applications were rejected.

“A degree from a good university used to guarantee a spot at least at a top 10 company, but that was when a college degree actually meant something,” Kim, 25, said on Aug. 28, as she walked to a Chinese lesson she’s taking to boost her chance of joining one of the nation’s most prestigious employers. “I studied hard and did everything right, but there are too many of us who did.”

With almost three out of four high school students going to college in an effort to get a top-paying job in one of the leading industrial groups, known as chaebols, South Korea is being flooded with more college graduates than it needs. Its 30 biggest companies hired 260,000 of them last year, leaving another 60,000 to swell the youth unemployment rate to 7.3 percent in July, more than twice the national average.

The government’s response is a U-turn from decades of increasingly competitive and expensive education that made South Korea No. 1 in the world for academic qualifications. President Lee Myung Bak’s new message to many high-school students is: Skip college and go to work.

http://www.businessweek.com/news/201...h-koreans-jobs

And make more babies.

Actually, without the silly obssession for college entrance and the cram schooling that children have to go through for that, having a child won't be so expensive. The greatest cost that parents spend for their children is usually for their education. True, the educated labor force brought us to where we are now, but we are past the point where we need more skilled workers than there already are.

In a separate news, there are now 1.4 million foreigners residing and working in Korea, which is 3% of Korea's population, or 5% of the labor force. Many (though not the majority) of them work jobs that Koreans with high degrees refuse to.

http://english.yonhapnews.co.kr/nati...007900315.HTML

Thankfully, like in the case of Singapore or Hong Kong, this is one advantage that aged economies like Japan with similar education inflation problems does not have. With relatively healthy financial outlook for the time being, the foreign population will continue to increase to diversify Korea's labor force. The big challenge is for Korea's existing generation to maintain the trend and accept this increasing number of foreign and multicultural family, and improve their economic participation and productivity, such as through the appointment of foreigners and multicultural Koreans in high ranking positions of Korea's corporate world or the government. A notable event was the election of Jasmin Lee, a native Filipino and a naturalized Korean, as a member of the 19th national Parliament (the Korean equivalent of US Senate).

http://mb.com.ph/node/357417/filipinokorean-ja

In Korea, this event was significant because it broke the still relatively Confucian political tradition that foreigners or women should have a minor role in the governance of the country. More importantly, it was significant because she was elected through a democratic election, meaning a majority vote by Koreans against her fellow Korean candidates. The modern generation of Koreans are becoming more open to not only working with and living alongside foreigners, but also to qualified foreigners governing them as their leaders (xenophobes still do exist, but they are a minority). So there is still chance for the Korean culture to achieve the necessary changes to fix the impending demographic crisis. The real question is, how soon it can achieve it. I think the near tomorrow is the best.

[junglejim]

It's a hard lesson that the Philippines learned in the 80's. We used to have the best universities in the region, and everybody was pushed to graduate college and get a degree, this had a negative effect once the supply out paced the demands and college grads had to fight for jobs that doesnt need those degrees, like security guards and what not. It wreaked havoc on the pay and unemployment causing a lot to go abroad and take cheaper pay.

[IconOfEvi]

Go figure we're going through the same thing now as well

Props to my Asian bros! Wish we'd observed ya'll in the Philippines

And to Koreabros, we'll get through this. We must

[junglejim]

Go figure we're going through the same thing now as well

Props to my Asian bros! Wish we'd observed ya'll in the Philippines

And to Koreabros, we'll get through this. We must

Yeah we kinda were ahead of the curve till the 60's then we tripped and fumbled in the mid 70's all the way to the 80's. Just trying to catch up now. We were one of the first to show that one can drop from a tiger economy down to 3rd world in a span of 10 years, if you dont focus as a nation.

[Mackie]

Push vocational schools.