By Kim Bo-eun
The education ministry on Thursday said it ordered 11 universities to remove content from their admissions tests for 2017 not covered in the high school curriculum.
Having the content violates regulations intended to strengthen public education and prevent prior learning through private education. The regulation was enacted to reduce students’ reliance on private education.
Currently Korea’s education system creates a division between those who can afford private education and those who cannot.
The Korea Institute for Curriculum and Evaluation analyzed 2,294 questions of 57 universities which administered admissions essay tests and interviews for the 2017 academic year.
The 11 universities found to have violated the regulations are Seoul and Andong national universities, Yonsei Universitiy’s Seoul and Wonju campuses, Konyang, Sangji and Halla universities, the universities of Seoul and Ulsan, and Gwangju and Daegu Gyeongbuk Institutes for Science and Technology.
The universities were found to have asked excessively advanced questions in math and science on their exams.
The ministry has ordered the universities to submit plans in order to prevent them from including such questions in their admissions tests for next year.
For Yonsei University’s two campuses and the University of Ulsan, which violated the regulation for the second year in a row, the ministry will request a decision on punishing the university presidents, and deduct points and decrease subsidies accordingly for projects for the universities contributing to high school education.
Based on reviews by a ministry-affiliated committee, the ministry will also decide whether the colleges and university departments which have administered the questions will be partially banned from recruiting students for the 2019 academic year.