Fewer Young Students Going Abroad to Study
By Kwon Mee-yoo
Staff Reporter
The number of young students going abroad to study has been dropping. Some attribute it to a temporary hiccup for a variety of reasons, including the flu epidemic and the financial crisis, while others say that it is due to a structural change in the pattern of studying overseas.
According to the Ministry of Education, Science and Technology, 27,349 elementary, middle and high school students left the country to study abroad from March 2008 to this February. This represents around a 1 percent decline from the previous year’s 27,668 students.
While the total number of students studying abroad was only 1,562 in 1998, it steadily increased until 2006 to 29,511. It started to fall for the first time in 2007, when it declined to 27,668.
By school, elementary school students going overseas increased 190 to 12,531, taking up the largest share, while middle school and high school students dipped to 8,888 and 5,930, respectively.
“More and more elementary school students are leaving to study abroad. These elementary school students mostly attend school or language programs there for one or two years and then return to Korea,” Yoon Ho-jung, who is in charge of the junior program at Uhak.com, an agency sending students to overseas educational institutes and language programs.
“However, it is difficult to return to the Korean school system after high school and most students go to universities there. Still, they come back to Korea when they graduate college to get jobs here.”
One example of this is Park, a 25-year-old who went to Beijing to attend university after graduating from high school here. After completing university, she came back to Korea, but it was not easy to find a job.
“I found it hard to get a job here. I liked studying in China and am grateful for my experience there, but I think studying overseas is not an all-round solution,” Park said.
She worked as a part timer and taught Chinese for about a year before entering a medium-sized trading company. Experts believe the biggest reason for the drop is the financial crisis. The H1N1 influenza was counted as another reason.
“Economic hardship from the previous year hit parents who wanted to send their children abroad. As the financial difficulties have gotten better slowly this year, influenza A hindered them,” Yoon said.
“Moreover, parents do not want to send their children away to study during this flu-spreading moment. Even though advanced countries such as the United States have better vaccination and treatment systems for the influenza, the parents still want to take care of their children by themselves.”
Some suggest there has been a change in the attitude of parents toward studying abroad. “We have to analyze specific causes, but there is a possibility that parents are rethinking the effect of early overseas schooling,” an official of the ministry said.