One more year of hope or despair?

Students attend a lecture in a cram school located in Sinseol-dong, Seoul.
/ Korea Times file

Rush to cram schools reflects excessive zeal for education

By Baek Byung-yeul, Nam Hyun-woo, Park Ji-won

For students waiting for the first day of class at university, this winter would have had some bittersweet moments. However, for those who failed to gain admission to university, winter is the time to decide which cram school to enroll in preparation for the college entrance exam later this year.

Apart from the reality that some 80 percent of Korean students go to some type of university, this season is also no doubt a boom period for cram schools.

Financial burdens

Needless to say studying for one more year imposes financial burdens on families.

Megastudy, one of the best-known cram schools, or "hagwon," in Korea for instance, charges a fee of 955,000 won ($930) per month for students preparing for the College Scholastic Ability Test (CSAT).

The cram school offers students what its operator claims is the most effective way of studying-- 14 hours a day from Monday to Friday and 12 hours on weekends.

Most students believe that "jaesu hagwon" or repeat institutes offer them better chances of success in retaking the CSAT. But parents who have to foot all the expenses for another year are not amused by the extra financial burden it brings. Jaesu means repeat in Korean.

Students and parents attend a briefing session to work out strategies on how to apply for colleges at the Central City auditorium, southern Seoul. The event was organized by Daesung Hagwon, a major cram school in Korea.
/ Korea Times file

Jung Sun-mi, a 50-year-old housewife living in Seoul, said she feels extremely burdened by her son who decided to spend one more year studying for the CSAT.

Her 18-year-old son Min-su recently registered with a jaesu hagwon near their home and asked her to pay the monthly fee of 800,000 won.

Jung, who is already hard up, said spending that amount of money on her son will be a burden on her family budget.

"If he enters college this year, I want him to pay tuition with a school loan because I can't afford to pay such a huge amount of money for him for another four years."

"If it ends with him only paying 800,000 won a month that would be okay. But that's not the end. I have to give him an additional 300,000 to 400,000 won for his food expenses and money for buying study materials," she said.

Despite all her complaints, she is fully aware of the "importance" of obtaining a college degree and will certainly have to foot all the bills.

"Today, as you know, we are living in a nation that requires at least a university diploma to gain a decent job, so I had to go along with it," she said.

According to the Seoul Metropolitan Office of Education, the monthly fees of jaesu hagwon should be fixed at under 530,000 won per month. However, it is difficult to regulate hagwon under the present law to get them to cut extra expenses because there is no such regulation on fees for books and food.

Ranked cram schools

As the industry for high school graduates taking the college entrance exam is already saturated, cram schools are tacitly ranked.

Usually, such institutions base their admission decisions on applicants' CSAT scores and GPAs before admitting them.

In the case of Daesung Hagwon in southern Seoul, one of the more renowned institutions in Korea, it only accepts students whose CSAT scores are in the top 1 percent bracket.

For those not meeting this strict admission policy, the institute conducts its own test and admits only those who pass the test.

"I planned to apply for hagwon after I failed my CSAT," said Ji, an 18-year-old who took the Nov. 17 annual exam last year.

He said he applied to the hagwon, but his CSAT score was too low to attend "Gangnam Daesung." Hagwon staff suggested he take the hagwon entrance exam.

"Of course, the fee comes as a burden to my parents, but they gladly paid the cost, saying ‘We'll do everything to get you a better college degree,'" he said.

On average, monthly tuition for such hagwon stand at 700,000 to 1 million won per month. For institutions offering dormitories, the fees are doubled.

"It is ironic that I have to take an exam to enter a cram school which I want to attend to enter a prestigious university," Ji said.

Another student, Kim, said, "Entering a cram school is even more difficult than getting admitted to universities."

Students from other parts of the country coming to attend prestigious hagwon mostly based in Seoul, also have to pay rent for studio apartments or small rooms. This comes as another financial burden for them.

In order to attract more students, hagwon resort to a marketing strategy based on the so-called "star tutors" system, by mainly advertizing popular instructors who are paid high salaries. These instructors have ironically become the biggest beneficiaries of the country's heated cram school industry and its education frenzy.

One such tutor, Kim, 40, who teaches English at Megastudy, makes more than $4 million annually.

Many students say his lectures are practical and they also find him very inspiring.

Though star instructors receive huge incomes, most of them say that the education race phenomenon mirrors Korea's distorted enthusiasm for education as well as its inefficient system.

"I'm not actually proud of my success," Kim said during an interview with CBS news. "The other side of the coin is the inefficiency of Korean education."

Hagwon teachers agree that Korea's education system has lost its purpose of teaching students "what matters in their real life."

"Students spend too much time studying things like differential or integral calculus that many of them may use less than once in their lifetime," said a cram school teacher who withheld her name.