By Kang Shin-who
Staff Reporter
Korean parents are shouldering the heaviest burden of expenditure for public education among OECD countries.
The public education expenditure by the private sector, including parents and educational foundations, accounted for 2.9 percent of gross domestic product (GDP) in 2006, according to the OECD report.
It marks the highest of the 26 countries surveyed for the category and surpasses the OECD average of 0.8 percent. Private-sector public education costs refer to tuition, meal fees and other public education-related charges for primary and secondary schools as well as universities.
However, the government's public education expenditure as a percentage of GDP stood at 4.3 percent, lower than the OECD average of 5 percent.
``High college tuition fees can be one of the reasons for this. The government has not financially supported colleges compared with other OECD countries,'' said Shin Eun-hee of the education ministry.
The cost for elementary and secondary schools was not much different with other countries but the expenditure on tertiary education made big a difference.
Despite high education costs, Korea topped the OECD countries in population that has attained at least upper secondary education among those 25-34 age range. However, the percentage of parents who were satisfied with education quality was lower than the OECD average.
The report also found that Korea had a high ratio of students to teaching staff in higher education institutions. Korea ranked third in annual tuition for state-run universities at $3,883 following the United States' $5,027 and Japan's $3,920. In the case of private universities, the U.S. topped with $18,604. Turkey came next with $14,430 followed by Australia with $7,452 and Korea with $7,406.
However, Korean professors were paid more than the OECD average salary and their working hours were shorter than those of faculties in other countries.