Korean Job Discussion Forums

[Real Reality]

Brain Korea, Or What's Left of It
... students of 15 universities majoring in economics, math and IT, 23.9 percent of students were unable to convert 75.3 percent into 0.753. Some 14.5 percent of students failed to pinpoint the largest figure from among 0.8, 13/20, 37/50, 0.27 and 85/100. These are students majoring in disciplines relying a great deal on math.

Samsung Electronics spends W80 billion a year on re-education of newly hired employees. Major corporations' rate of hiring experienced workers jumped from 39.6 percent in 1996 to 79 percent in 2005 because new employees fresh from university are useless.

A Japanese academic research institute evaluated the academic standards in math, physics and chemistry of freshmen and seniors of over 10 universities in 2003, and Korea came last in all fields. Freshmen's math scores ranged from between 31.6 and 35.6 points for Chinese, between 10 and 47.4 points for Japanese -- and between 1.3 and 16 points for Koreans....
Chosun Ilbo (September 25, 2006)
http://english.chosun.com/w21data/html/news/200609/200609250036.html

[jlb]

Doesn't really surprise me that much for 2 reasons:

1. the focus on memorization and passing tests vs. actually knowing something and being able to use/apply it in real life.

2. I hear stories of how little university students actually study from my friends who work there.

[doggyji]

[billybrobby]

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A41278-2004Dec6.html

[doggyji]

[Dan The Chainsawman]

Yet 44 of the top 100 university of the world are located in the USA.

[ChuckECheese]

I've heard from my Korean adult students who have graduated from various Korean Unis that Unis here really don't teach any practical skills. Most Unis here are designed such that students can have fun from the start to finish.

I remember in my uni in America, it was mostly fun and game for the first two years but I had to work my ass-off to get my grades during my final half. And felt like I actually learned and accomplished something when I graduated.

So I guess it's little different here though. I notice there are so many dinky colleges and unis in Korea so I guess most or all of them are basically partying unis.

[JeJuJitsu]

[doggyji]

[billybrobby]

[gang ah jee]

[Ya-ta Boy]

A lot of the difference in scores can be explained by the age at which subjects are taught. I'm sure it's changed some, but at one time American kids didn't get algebra until 8th Grade (middle school) and geometry in 9th. Korean kids were getting it a couple of years earlier, so naturally had better scores until their relative advantage disappeared with time.

When I was a high school teacher, my observation about dumbassivity was that generally speaking, the overall rate declined between sophomore and senior years, but with a spike in the last couple of months of senior year just before graduation (known as senioritis in some circles). However, for certain individuals it remained constant: Once a dumbass, always a dumbass. James was and remains to this day a prime example. He asked his friend to shoot him in the hand one night. His dumbass friend complied. There were other people who started sophomore year with a reasonably low dumbass score but who swam upstream, shall we say, and increased their dumbassivity as they got older. For example, as a sophomore Ron didn't do anything really more dumbass than walk the girders under the Missouri River bridge while drunk, a common dumbass thing to do in that area. By senior year he had taken to robbing convenience stores while drunk, just for fun.

[JongnoGuru]

Why are you all talking about dumbassness like it's a bad thing? As current examples demonstrate, that doesn't prevent you from rising to the very top in Korea or America. Might even become a prerequisite some day.