Preserve competitiveness, culture through education

The following is the first of a two-part article about the Korean education system and its effect on the economy. Dr. Chris Baumann, a senior lecturer at Macquarie University and Dr. Hume Winzar, an associate professor in business at the university contributed the article to The Korea Times. ― ED.

Dr. Chris Baumann

Dr. Hume Winzar

By Chris Baumann and Hume Winzar

The election of 13 liberal (out of 17) city and provincial education superintendents may weaken Korea’s position as a world leader in education while hindering Korea’s unprecedented economic progression.

A move away from the proven path of a performance-oriented, disciplined and competitive educational approach to a more permissive Western approach may soon be associated with a drop in the country’s educational and economic performance.

Korea’s biggest challenge is to preserve its cultural heritage, unique Confucian approach to education and to defend its strong economic position, all now contested by other East Asian nations.

If Korea deviates from its traditional approach to education, it may regret the radical shift in the long term. Once education officials realize this, it may be too late to return to Korea’s successful roots.

Liberal-minded education policymakers as well as teachers must understand the link between education policy and economic welfare of a country, and not be tempted by naive ideologies that may have contributed to skewed performances in some Western countries.

Our new study, “The role of secondary education in explaining competitiveness” published in the Asia Pacific Journal of Education (web link: https://dx.doi.org/10.1080/02188791.2014.924387) sheds light on the complex relationship between education and how it affects a country’s competitiveness.

The effect of education on a nation’s economic performance has long been an area of speculation and investigation. Researchers have attempted to measure links between various measures of educational investment economic performance.

First, education is an investment for the long-term future of a country. But how long should it take before national investment returns dividends?

Within individual organizations a company can save more money and time training in-house workers instead of carrying out external recruitment. However, at a national level how long should the time-frame be for producing a more educated workforce if huge investment begins at an early age, say primary school?

Second, investment in education is rarely an isolated activity. It is difficult to pinpoint the success of an educational system to just one or two factors in gauging its success. Class size, teacher skills, starting skills of students, educational technology, and incentives for school administrators, teachers, students, and parents all contribute.

Third, the links between education and economic performance are not likely to be correlated. In a sense, the process is really self-reinforcing between three main factors. Let’s start with education producing a more skilled workforce, such as engineers and savvy entrepreneurs. In turn, the skilled labor born from higher education produces cheaper, higher quality products. From there, better produced goods lead to a greater economy, giving a nation more capital available to spend on education. From there, the process represents a circle.

Fourth, it is very difficult to make sound comparisons of educational investment. Countries differ wildly on everything from teacher salaries and qualifications, to class sizes and hours, to specific standards of achievement. Cultural influences also are a major influence on how educational investment is linked to other aspects of life.

One attempt to compare education has had much success. The Program for International Student Assessment (PISA) largely ignores input and concentrates on practical skills among 15-year-old schoolchildren in mathematics, science and reading. PISA was started among OECD countries in 2000 and has now been adopted across 75 countries in 2012.

East Asian students have performed particularly well in the PISA rankings. This has caused some uncomfortable responses from Europe and North America. In Britain’s popular newspapers, such as the Guardian and the Daily Mail, they have reported on the country’s declining PISA ranking.

South Korea’s school system has earned attention and praise from American President Barack Obama in his 2011 State of the Union address, in which he described the South Korean school system as a role model, where teachers garner respect and are viewed as nation builders.

If liberal education policymakers were to reduce the power of teachers and enforce Western pedagogy upon them, then Korea easily gives up what it has achieved over the past 60 years.

National economic performance can be measured in several different ways. Usually we consider GDP, GDP per capita, or changes in these measures. In our study on the role of secondary education in explaining competitiveness we used a slightly different approach by adopting the Global Competitiveness Index (GCI) published by the World Economic Forum (WEF).

The GCI is a composite measure of 12 indicators of competitiveness, broken down into three groups of requirements. The first group is basic requirements such as institutions, health and infrastructure.

The second group is efficiency enhancers such as technological readiness and labor market efficiency. The third group includes business sophistication and innovation. This multidimensionality assures a comprehensive and objective measurement of a country’s competitiveness.

Dr. Chris Baumann is senior lecturer at Macquarie University, Sydney, researching competitiveness, education, East Asia and customer loyalty. He is a visiting professor at Seoul National University (SNU) in Korea. Dr. Hume Winzar is associate professor in business at Macquarie University, Sydney. His current research interests are the modeling of complex systems in economics, marketing and education.