Quality of college education falling in Korea: report

The quality of Korean higher education fell behind most major countries despite its high rate of college graduates, according to an annual report by a Swiss business school.

Korea stood fourth among 55 countries in terms of its university completion rate in this year`s World Competitiveness Yearbook, released yesterday by the International Institute for Management Development in Lausanne, Switzerland.

However, Korea ranked 53rd in the extent to which university education meets social and economic needs, one of the criteria for measuring the quality of higher education.

Korea tumbled in the overall competitiveness of the education sector as well, moving six steps down from last year to 35th.

In educational competitiveness, Korea ranked 44th in 2004, 40th in 2005, 42nd in 2006 and jumped to 29th last year.

Shin Eun-hee, in charge of statistics at the Ministry of Education, Science and Technology, said an immediate analysis of the setback was unavailable as the rankings were based on a sum of scores earned in dozens of categories, some of which are based on survey results.

"Most of the categories where Korea scored poorly were assessed based on a poll of chief executive officers in Korea," Shin said. "IMD`s counterpart Samsung Economic Research Institute surveyed 300 CEOs and the IMD did some on their own for the WCY."

For example, most of the CEOs surveyed said that Korea had declined in its supply of highly skilled engineers and the extent to which technology-related regulations support corporate development. Korea came last among the 55 economies in the latter category.

"Last year, the CEO survey gave a much higher score for supply of highly skilled engineers, resulting in an advance in the overall educational competitiveness," Shin said.

Korea ranked 45th in corporate online security, another category based on survey results, and 50th in the number of elementary school students per teacher, according to the IMD report.

"The Education Ministry is conducting its own study into how Korean higher education meets corporate needs and plans to release the results by July," Shin said.

The IMD report showed that Korea improved compared to last year, however, in terms of how language skills met corporate needs.

Korea topped the list in the number of patents granted per person in research and development and ranked third in the number of subscribers to broadband communication networks. It came fourth in corporate R&D investment and fifth in total R&D investment as a percentage of gross domestic production.

By Kim So-hyun

(sophie@heraldm.com)