Tag: colleges

It will be interesting to see if this new policy has any effect on the amount of bullying in Korean schools:

This is a still image of Netflix’s “The Glory,” which revolves around the revenge-driven female character who survived horrifying abuse in high school. (Netflix)

Students with a history of bullying or school violence will have their records reflected in the regular college admissions process starting in 2024, and the current bullying record retention period of two years will be extended to four years after graduation, the government said Wednesday.

School violence records will be submitted to colleges “voluntarily” in the admissions process for the 2025 school year, but will be reflected on a “mandatory” basis for admissions in 2026. According to the Education Ministry, bullying records would not be included in this year’s college admissions because changes to university criteria and admissions guidelines must be announced two years in advance.

Korea Herald

You can read more at the link.

If you are an international student in South Korea you will once again be paying more for tuition this year:

Amid what they say are financial struggles, local universities are relying on international students in their decision to raise international student tuition. 

This year’s hikes for international students are in sharp contrast to tuition for domestic students, which has been frozen for the last 15 years. 

Major universities in Seoul, including Chung-Ang University, Hanyang University, Sogang University, Sungkyunkwan University, the University of Seoul and Yonsei University, will raise tuition for international students by up to five percent this year, according to those in the education circle.

The main reason for the tuition hikes for international students is government restrictions on raising tuition for domestic students, they say. According to Korea’s Higher Education Act, tuition increases cannot be more than 1.5 times the average increase in consumer prices during the three preceding years, meaning that tuition for domestic students can only rise by up to 4.05 percent this year. 

Korea Times

You can read more at the link.

Is the below nonsense really the focus now of America’s colleges?  If so, no wonder college graduates today are having such a hard time finding a job.  When I was in college I spent too much time working and studying to get one of the dreaded STEM degrees to have time to worry about “safe spaces’ and “trigger warnings”:

Just as the social turmoil of the 1960s generated new vocabulary — turn-on, sit-in, sexism — this latest wave of activism and upheaval is adding to our lexicon, with terms such as safe space, trigger warning, microaggression and cultural appropriation, which we explore here. We asked student leaders and activists from local universities to define these terms for us and to elaborate based on their own thoughts and experiences.

Many students believe these concepts foster inclusion, increase sensitivity and set up parameters in which difficult conversations can occur and marginalized voices can be heard. But critics, both on campus and off, call the concepts limiting, unrealistic, even un-American. They argue that creating safe spaces and using trigger warnings, for example, serve only to stifle free speech, coddle students and ignore both history and the reality found off campus.  [Washington Post]

You have to read the whole thing because did you know that it is “cultural appropriation” and disrespectful to get for example braids or wear a headscarf if you are not from that culture?  So all the foreigners that come to Korea and get pictures taken in hanboks I guess are disrespectful to Koreans according to today’s American college students?

It makes me wonder if all this nonsense is going to eventually trickle into Korean universities as well?

If anyone is wondering below is what is being taught now a days in America’s colleges about 9/11.  It is one thing to present an opposing view, but if students are penalized by the instructor for not agreeing with it as described in the article, than I have a problem with that.  Has anyone recently been through a college course that teaches such anti-US propaganda liked described in the article?:

Not all of us will be mourning 9/11 victims and their families this Friday on the 14th anniversary of the attacks. Hundreds of college kids across the country will instead be taught to sympathize with the terrorists.

That’s because their America-hating leftist professors are systematically indoctrinating them into believing it’s all our fault, that the US deserved punishment for “imperialism” — and the kids are too young to remember or understand what really happened that horrific day.

Case in point is a freshman-level English class taught at several major universities across the country called “The Literature of 9/11” — which focuses almost entirely on writings from the perspective of the Islamic terrorists, rather than the nearly 3,000 Americans who were slaughtered by them.  The syllabus, which includes books like “The Reluctant Fundamentalist” and “Poems from Guantanamo: Detainees Speak,” portray terrorists as “freedom fighters” driven by oppressive US foreign policies.  [NY Post]

You can read the rest at the link.

How come I am not surprised by this news?:

Two years ago, when Mrs. Lee’s 20-year-old son was found to have lied on his college application papers and later got expelled from his university, she was furious. But she wasn’t angry because he had acted immorally; rather, she was more upset because, in her mind, it was useless to blame him for something everyone else did, too.

“In Gangnam, everyone does this,” Lee reportedly told police. “Why is he the only one getting in trouble?”

Further investigation proved that her son, surnamed Sohn, also had an accomplice – his teacher.

When authorities looked into the case, they found that Sohn had received an undeserved award in an art competition for a piece he hadn’t created. His teacher switched the boy’s name with another student and submitted the work on Sohn’s behalf.

His teacher recommendation letter also included details of volunteer work he had never completed.

Sohn applied to college in the early admissions process, which assesses an applicant’s transcripts, extracurricular activities, academic awards, volunteer work, recommendation letters and grades.

In Korea, regular admissions normally evaluate applicants’ scores on the College Scholastic Ability Test (CSAT), a standardized exam held every November. Thirty-five percent of the seats available at local colleges next year will be chosen via regular admissions, while the remaining 65 percent will be selected through early admissions.

One in every four early admissions slots will be determined through criteria similar to that which determined Sohn’s admission. But if Sohn’s case is any indication, university officials are mostly helpless to verify certain information, and similar fabrications often fly under the radar.

“There’s really not much we can do but believe whatever documents were authorized by the high school,” said one university admissions officer, who asked for anonymity. “It’s hard to tell which paper was fabricated when you have students and teachers collaborating in the scheme.”  [Joong Ang Ilbo]

You can read more at the link, but probably most disturbing about this is that the teachers are helping the students to lie on the applications.

[Industry] Half of major firms’ board members come from SKY, overseas schools http://t.co/3xs99IH0pG #industry pic.twitter.com/KhJUgtcVgv

— 코리아헤럴드 Korea Herald (@TheKoreaHerald) October 10, 2014

This is what happens when everyone goes to college and want the same jobs:

Last year, 71 percent of high-school graduates went on university, but only 59.3 percent of university and college graduates were able to find jobs. The number of unemployed people between 15 to 29 years of age has surpassed 400,000.

Now young jobless people often cause a headache for their parents who still have to support them.

Yet young graduates continue to insist on jobs with major conglomerates in Seoul, which are not only growing scarce but extremely competitive, while small businesses have a tough time finding people to work for them.

A study by the Ministry of Employment and Labor shows that there will be a shortage of high-school graduates to the tune of 320,000 by 2020 and more than 500,000 excess university graduates.

Unless university graduates lower their sights and seek a wider range of job options, the day may come when a degree becomes utterly useless. (Chosun Ilbo)

You can read more at the link, but I think it is arguable that college degrees with a few exceptions in both the U.S. and Korea have been devalued to where they are becoming glorified high school diplomas.