Costly Yet Uncompetitive

President's Scolding on Tutoring Cost Is Right but …

Korea spent 21 trillion won ($16 billion) on private education ― 230,000 won per student ― last year, up 4.3 percent from 2007. Most parents might be surprised with this figure, as it was far smaller, not bigger, than expected in a country where 1 million-won tutoring bills for high school seniors are all too common.

So President Lee Myung-bak was right Tuesday when he scolded education officials for failing to curb the soaring private education cost, going the extra length to say, ``Cram school operators' lobbying must have been quite powerful.''

The President's fury and frustration is understandable, as halving the private tutoring cost was one of his two most famous campaign promises with the other being the now-abandoned ``7-4-7'' ― to make Korea a G-7 member with per capita income of $40,000 through annual 7-percent growth ― by the time he leaves office in early 2013.

Voters knew both were too rosy to be real, even considering the overblown nature of election pledges. If asked which is even more difficult to realize, most would point to dampening the private tutoring fervor; in pure theory, 7-4-7 may be possible if each and every economic factor at home and abroad turns in Korea's favor, but private educational zeal is unlikely to cool down as long as the Korean society remains as it is now and continues to suffer from an extreme imbalance between the demand and supply of good schools.

We agree with President Lee's goal as well as some policies going toward it, such as the government's stress on strengthening public education as a means of reducing private institutions. One thing the construction CEO-turned-politician should have in mind, however, is that he should not approach this like he would completing a building project ahead of schedule, not least because education reform has long been compared to a ``national centurial plan.''

No less important is to minimize conflict between various policies supposed to aim at the same objective. For instance, the Lee administration is vowing to reduce private tutoring expenses but, at the same time, is encouraging unfettered competition among self-regulatory schools, driving secondary schools to pursue elitist education and students to turn toward private educational institutions to enter them to better compete with other students.

Such discrepancy between policies makes one doubt President Lee's sincerity when he said, ``I want to make Korea a country where students can enter good universities and land decent jobs without receiving private education.''

So what Lee and his administration should do seems clear. They ought to enhance the educational quality of public high schools, instead of increasing specialized schools, by providing a custom-made curriculum that better meets the demands of students on different levels and offers more specialized education in some subjects. At the heart of all programs should be better teachers, who the government should nurture with better rewards and a stricter appraisal system.

Lee, a self-taught, rags-to-riches success model, must never forget to maintain an environment to produce more like him.