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One of Singapore's advantage is also a 'well educated labour force". With the number of universities and polytechnics sprouting up, will Singapore ended up in similar predicament? How many well educated taxi drivers we already have on the road?

Korea grapples with over-educationKorea Herald/Asia News Network | Fri Jun 17 2011
The mismatch between university education and the labour market is a key challenge facing the nation.

The 27-year-old graduate of a university in Seongnam, Gyeonggi Province, now goes to a vocational training institute in Seoul to learn how to make coffee. Hopefully, after completing this four-month course, she will be able to find a job at one of the coffee shops which seem to be at almost every corner of the city.

"I had tried to find an office job but had no luck," Lee said, declining to give her first name.

Her B.A. degree in French literature will be of little use for a barista job, she admitted.

A starting barista earns about 1.3 million won (S$1,400) a month. A cup of coffee-based drink from famous coffee chains like Starbucks costs around 5,000 won.

From an economic point of view, Lee's four-year university education, which cost her parents about 30 million won in tuition alone, was a terrible investment.

Still, most parents in Korea strongly believe that higher education is the best way to prepare their children for fiercely competitive Korean society.

According to a survey conducted by Statistics Korea last year, 93 per cent of parents polled expected their children to finish a four-year university degree at least.

"Everybody goes to university in Korea. So if you don't, you will be discriminated against and will find it hard to join mainstream society," said Ahn Jin-gull, a director at Seoul-based civic group People's Solidarity for Participatory Democracy.

Koreans proudly say that the well-educated labour force was the main driver of the country's miraculous rise from the ashes of the Korean War.
But their passion for education has gone way overboard. The country of 48 million now has 347 colleges and universities and 3.3 million people enrolled in them. Eighty per cent of high school graduates advanced to tertiary education. This means that one in every 14 Koreans is a university student.

According to the Organization for Economic Cooperation & Development, 56 per cent of Koreans aged 25-34 received higher education, which is the second highest rate among the OECD's member countries, after Canada.

"Entering a university has become the goal of education," said Lee Seung-geun, an official of Korean Council for University College Education. "We're teaching our children to enter a good university, with no consideration of what they want to become," he said.

The problem is the economy is creating not enough quality jobs for college graduates.

"Over the past two decades, the number of college and university students doubled. But the number of jobs for graduates hasn't grown that much," an official at the Finance Ministry said.

The mismatch between university education and the labour market is a key challenge facing the nation.

In May, the country's overall unemployment rate stood at 3.2 per cent and the number among under 30s was 7.3 per cent. The official data, however, fails to show the real situation, economists say.

A lot of college students delay graduation until after they secure a job, prepare for exams for public-sector jobs or various skills certificates to pad their resume, which exclude them from the official count of the jobless, they say. Some flee to graduate schools, or like Lee, lower their expectations to take lower-level jobs.

A study by Nam Jae-ryang, a research fellow of Korea Labour Institute says that nearly 40 per cent of those who graduated from universities in February are still without a job yet.

"Every year, colleges and universities churn out nearly 500,000 graduates, but the kind of jobs they want ― such as jobs at large companies, public firms or government agencies ― are limited at 100,000 at most," Kim Hee-sam, a researcher at the Korea Development Institute said.

(19-06-2011, 10:10 PM)touzi Wrote: [ -> ]One of Singapore's advantage is also a 'well educated labour force". With the number of universities and polytechnics sprouting up, will Singapore ended up in similar predicament? How many well educated taxi drivers we already have on the road?

This is a topic I'm very concerned about as I foresee this impacting my yet-to-be born, sometime in the future kid(s).

Already, we have almost 1 in 2 Singaporeans between 25-34 years old having a tertiary education now (Link) I blogged about it more in detail. (link here)

I think that it's almost inevitable that we'll have scores of Unemployed/under-employed graduates. Japan, Korea, Taiwan and other developed countries have gone that way; The 'Freeters' phenomenon in Japan is a nice case study (more info here). We ourselves have gone from the years where having an A-levels is enough for most jobs to present-day where a diploma/degree is the basic requirement.

So for me, I think the important question is: If we know such a future lies ahead, what is the best thing I should do now?
For me it's to study some more! Since a degree is so commonplace now, it's better to go ahead and seek professional qualifications... or perhaps part time post graduate studies?

Survival is really getting harder and harder... gone are the days of affordable HDB, education and less materialistic opposite gender!
What's next? More people with master and MBA in the future? Need to get PHD to secure a job. Remember the guy who has PHD and got retrench and become a taxi driver. Better think of alternative.
(20-06-2011, 01:15 PM)kazukirai Wrote: [ -> ]If we know such a future lies ahead, what is the best thing I should do now?

If getting paper qualification is a form of capitalism, then the tiptoe analogy applies.



http://money.cnn.com/magazines/fortune/f.../index.htm

Quote:So I would say that a lot of things in business, including technology, really have the same effect as if you went to a parade and the band started coming down the street and all of a sudden you stood up on tiptoe. In another 30 seconds everybody else is on tiptoe, and it would be hell on your legs and you still wouldn't be seeing any better.

Capitalism tends to be self-neutralizing like that in terms of improvements. That's marvelous because it means we have better everything than otherwise. But the real trick is to stand up on tiptoe and not have anyone notice you.
I wonder if "Blue-Chip" degree courses like Medicine, Law, Accountancy, Dentistry will someday be insufficient...
this article says it all - it pays to be in coffee business. smiles
(20-06-2011, 10:23 PM)isaac Wrote: [ -> ]I wonder if "Blue-Chip" degree courses like Medicine, Law, Accountancy, Dentistry will someday be insufficient...

Lawyers now are facing tougher competition... their salary isnt as lucrative as before.
(20-06-2011, 01:15 PM)kazukirai Wrote: [ -> ]So for me, I think the important question is: If we know such a future lies ahead, what is the best thing I should do now?

Prepare to migrate
(20-06-2011, 10:43 PM)pianist Wrote: [ -> ]this article says it all - it pays to be in coffee business. smiles

Hi Pianist,

' Wrote:I don't see the link or the article. Huh
Could you link it again?

Cancel last.
Alamak, I get what you mean now.


(21-06-2011, 09:37 AM)mrEngineer Wrote: [ -> ]Prepare to migrate

Ahaha, where would you go?
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