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Thirty Years of Marketization of Education: Triumph or Tragedy?

"No Uruguay Round! Farmers Perish Amid Plummeting Rice Prices!"


It seems like yesterday when I was an elementary school student in a humble farming hamlet in Jeongeup, Jeollabuk-do. My grandparents, small-scale farmers, lived there. I still vividly remember the unease I felt upon seeing a bold, red slogan painted on our village community hall. I may not have fully grasped its precise meaning then, but an overwhelming sense that our lives were being infiltrated by something substantial was imprinted in my young mind. It's been 30 years since the conclusion of the Uruguay Round. This led to the foundation of the World Trade Organization (WTO) in 1995 and the enforcement of the General Agreement on Trade in Services (GATS), signifying the opening of the education market.

In 1993, I was a primary schooler; a decade later, I went to the university. The noticeable shifts on campus, such as the surge in 'English-mediated lectures', 'international students', and the popular 'exchange student' programs, left an indelible mark. By 2013, another ten years later, I found myself employed at Sungkyunkwan University, shouldering the working-level responsibility of guiding the internationalization of higher education. Fast-forward to 2023, I held a mid-level management position at the State University of New York's campus in Korea at the Incheon Global Campus. Reflecting on my personal journey from student to professional, I'm compelled to question, "In the whirlwind of market liberalization over the past 30 years, what has our education gained and lost?"

From 1993 to 1995, there was a proliferation of discussions revolving around education market liberalization. The government maintained that education shouldn't be commodified, a stance opposed by skeptics fearing the potential loss of educational sovereignty and autonomy. In contrast, the optimists believed that market-oriented and liberal education would enhance student choices, stimulate competition among diverse local and international education service providers, and cultivate a synergistic environment. The period from 2002 to 2006 marked another noteworthy chapter in education market liberalization research, particularly because the Doha Development Agenda (DDA) in 2001 introduced concrete issues like requests for approval and concession.

Several foreign universities began operations in Korea from 2007, some of which have survived till today. Various types of foreign educational institutions, offering curricula from kindergarten through high school, have emerged in Jeju, Incheon, and Daegu. However, I am not only focusing on these apparent physical developments, but also the underlying 'transnational aspirations'. The fervor for education in Korea, acknowledged internationally, continues to be a prominent driving force in our society, including the education sector. It's an intriguing topic to speculate how this strongest force will operate in the hyper-connected, blurry, transnational era hastened by COVID-19 in a fully liberalized education market.

We may already be weary of examples like the Minerva Schools, MOOC, and Arizona State University. Numerous foreign universities are recruiting Korean students using their the CSAT (College Scholastic Aptitude Test) score. Korean students can receive US high school diplomas by completing American high school online standard curricula. The US GED has become an alternative for students aiming to study in American universities without completing the Korean high school curriculum. A large number of students are opting for a variety of unaccredited international alternative schools and looking overseas, moving away from the national education curriculum. The International Baccalaureate (IB), initially introduced in a handful of private high schools, has gained significant attention after being mentioned by the President of Seoul National University, reaching Daegu, Jeju, Gyeonggi, and Busan.

In recent years, we have been immersed in discussing substantial education-related issues such as 'admission quota adjustment of early and regular admissions', 'COVID-19 response and remote learning', 'lowering of school age', 'vacant Minister of Education position', 'national curriculum revision', and 'higher education finance grants'. As we pause and take a look around, it appears the world has evolved faster than we had perceived.

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* Disclaimer

This content is a translation of an article composed in Korean language, published in January 2023 on Korea University Education News. To view the original article, please visit http://kuen.korea.ac.kr/news/articleView.html?idxno=416.

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