By Choi Sung-jin
Until the mid-1990s, female college students graduated from their schools in four years, and most male students in seven, including their three years of military service.
Now, staying in school for five or six years is common for women students and it takes 10 years for some men to leave school, as they take off from school for one to three years for various reasons. There is one ultimate reason, however, for their prolonged stay at school: difficulties in landing jobs, especially decent ones.
According to a recent employment survey by Statistics Korea, out of the total number of college graduates as of May 30, 1,307,000, or 44.6 percent, had taken leaves of absence, up 8.3 percentage points from 36.3 percent in May 2007 when the national statistical agency began to collect related data.
As for their reasons, 26.9 percent of those who took time off from school cited landing jobs and preparation for qualifying exams, an increase of 12.3 percentage points from 14.6 percent 2007, hitting the highest level ever. Among others, 15.1 percent did so to learn foreign languages or accumulate experience through working as interns, up 5.1 percentage points from 10.0 percent 2007.
These college graduates had put off their graduation while preparing to get jobs because students can enjoy more benefits than graduates in landing jobs, the report said.
Those who took a scholastic hiatus to earn tuition or living costs accounted for 11.4 percent, down 1.5 percentage points from nine years ago, and the share of students who temporarily left their studies to join the army also dropped from 74.5 percent to 68.6 percent, over the cited period.
Even if they landed jobs by taking time off from university, fewer students found their jobs satisfactory than students did in the past.
When these young people quit their first jobs, their average period of continuous service remained at 15 months, down three months from 18 months, which was the average in 2004.
Asked why they quit, 48.6 percent -- a number sharply higher than the 39.4 percent in 2004 -- said they were dissatisfied with working conditions, including their salaries and working hours. That means nearly one in two young workers resigned from their first jobs because of working conditions that fell short of their expectations.
More than one in 10 workers, or 10.7 percent, resigned because their jobs were temporary or seasonal or because their contract period expired, with the portion more than double the 5.3 percent in 2004.
On the other hand, the number of young workers who resigned for personal reasons, including health, marriage and child care, plunged from 22.3 percent to 13.5 percent, and those who did so because their majors, technical knowledge and aptitudes did not match with their jobs also dropped from 8.7 percent to 8.0 percent.
“Because of the increasingly tougher job market, many college graduates start at small and midsize companies but quit early after finding the working conditions are different from what they wanted,” said Byeon Ji-sung, a staff member at Job Korea, a job-seeking portal. “Such phenomenon will deepen unless the government comes up with a policy to narrow the wage gap between large and smaller businesses.”