Liberal education chief vows to achieve equality
2010-06-04 17:45
The new liberal Seoul education Superintendent Kwak No-hyun vowed to put the brakes on government’s policies he believes have been encouraging excessive competition.Instead, he said he would focus on realizing an unbiased learning education for students and work for their welfare.
Kwak No-hyun Kwak was elected as Seoul‘s first liberal superintendent.
He has worked for various private and state-run human rights associations and also was an adviser to late President Roh Moo-hyun.
To start off his term, Kwak said he would terminate autonomous private high schools.
“There will be no further designations of autonomous private high schools,” said Kwak in a press conference following his surprising victory Wednesday.
Why Do Korean Universities Lag Behind Hong Kong’s? – And then some of my reasons
Why Do Korean Universities Lag Behind Hong Kong’s?
The University of Hong Kong was named the best university in Asia for the second straight year in a study by the Chosun Ilbo and Quacquarelli Symonds of 448 universities in 11 Asian countries. Hong Kong University of Science and Technology came second and Chinese University of Hong Kong fourth.
But in Korea, Seoul National University was the only one to make it into the top 10, ranking in sixth place. Hong Kong has a population of 7 million, a mere seventh of Korea’s, but when it comes to the competitiveness of universities, Hong Kong does far better than Korea.
The government of Hong Kong provides financial support to eight universities through a funding committee affiliated with the education ministry. The size of the support depends strictly on performance, which prompts universities to compete to attract the best faculty and students and to improve the quality of their education and research. At the University of Hong Kong, 56 percent of faculty and 31 percent of students are foreigners from 80 countries. Using English as the preferred language of education, the university manages to draw the best academics in each field. At its engineering faculty, 96 percent rank among the top one percentile group in the ISI (Information Sciences Institute) ranking of most cited research papers.
First, I have to question how these universities are ranked. I’ve yet to see anything about data collection and analysis, but I’m weary of any of these rankings.
This is a good, surface-level analysis, but it ignores some of the reasons why Hong Kong universities can attract these high-performing faculty.
1. HK Uni’s pay for these folks. Real salaries (with benefits) are around double of those in Korea.
2. HK is simply more foreigner-friendly (primarily European/North American) than Korea. Heck, it was a British protectorate for a 100 years and this is obvious when visiting the city.
3. HK Uni’s offer research release time. Translation, not as much teaching leaves time for more research.
4. Lastly, HK Uni’s attract mid-/end-of-career professors who are looking for new opportunities (travel, research, weather, etc.) and the high salaries mentioned in #1 make this an easier transition. Can you imagine one of these professors coming to Seoul with a middle/high school aged kid and a spouse for $80,000/yr (humanities)? Before you say, that’s not too bad, think about the high cost of housing, of shopping (clothes and food), and..oh yeah… $25,000/yr for international school tuition and fees. Forget about it. Not going to happen.
There are also some things that I’m not sure about. They may be different and they may not be.
1. Korean universities, while ruled from above (hierarchical), are run like fiefdoms. There is very little central planning focused on standardizing student/faculty experiences: classroom equipment, technology infrastructure, and faculty/staff training (for a few examples). This not only effects student experiences (and thus evaluations), but also faculty productivity. This lack of standardization results in extra planning time and loss of opportunities to streamline their teaching and class management. This also tends to result in over-lapping documentation requirements due to the fractured nature of the organizations.
2. Heavier teaching loads result in less time for good quality research. This leads to more publications in lower-ranked journals. It’s easier and faster to write 2 mediocre articles and publish in non-SSCI journals than it is to write 1 high-quality article and publish in an SSCI journal. This is a general problem throughout academia, but it seems particularly problematic here, especially considering most schools have tenure systems that actually take 10 years. That means that pre-tenure professors are struggling to publish about 2-4 articles/yr (depending on school) for nearly 10 years. Talk about burn out. Unless they can be assured of meeting their minimums, they have a hard time shooting for SSCI pubs that can take 2 years to actually get published. By then, they are looking for a new job 🙁
I’m not really down on Korean universities, particularly the top-tier ones. They are doing quite well in the science and technology areas. They do seem to be able to both staff from within and recruit from abroad. As with most large organizations, universities must continuously strive to both take care of their existing customers (students) and innovate to attract new customers and employees. If they ignore one group, it will hurt both the satisfaction of existing and the recruitment of new faculty and students. This is what, in the long run, will help universities improve and even do well in these stupid popularity contests.
No Grading, More Learning – I’m totally going to do this. Will it work in Korea?
No Grading, More Learning
May 3, 2010When Duke University’s Cathy Davidson announced her grading plan for a seminar she would be offering this semester, she attracted attention nationwide. Some professors cheered, others tut-tutted, and others asked “Can she do that?”
Her plan? Turn over grading to the students in the course, and get out of the grading business herself.
Now that the course is finished, Davidson is giving an A+ to the concept. “It was spectacular, far exceeding my expectations,” she said. “It would take a lot to get me back to a conventional form of grading ever again.”
Davidson is becoming a scholar of grading. She’s been observing grading systems at other colleges and in elementary and secondary schools, and she’s immersed herself in the history of grading. (If you want to know who invented the multiple choice test, she’ll brief you on how Frederick J. Kelly did so at Emporia State University and how he later renounced his technique.)
But it was her own course this semester — called “Your Brain on the Internet” — that Davidson used to test her ideas. And she found that it inspired students to do more work, and more creative work than she sees in courses with traditional grading.
Her approach — first announced on her blog — works based on contracts and “crowdsourcing.” First she announced the standards — students had to do all of the work and attend class to earn an A. If they didn’t complete all the assignments, they could get a B or C or worse, based on how many they finished. Students signed a contract to agree to the terms. But students also determined if the assignments (in this case blog posts that were mini-essays on the week’s work) were in fact meeting standards. Each week, two students led a discussion in class on the week’s readings and ideas — and those students determined whether or not their fellow students had met the standards.
I heard about this when they first posted about Davidson’s plans and I thought they were a good idea. Nothing revolutionary (though this author seems to think it is), but I like the approach that she took.
First, she establishes a general learning contract stating that students who fulfill all of the assignments get an A. Not submitting an assignment or not meeting the criteria, results in a lower grade (not set in stone).
Next, she assigned students into expert groups. Their groups are responsible for a topic, which is about a week long. The other students are then given assignments related to the content from that week (in this case, a blog posting). The expert group reads the blog posts and determines whether the student fulfilled the requirements or not.
I’ve done group grading before in which members assigned a percentage grade to their peers (I then averaged the grades and that’s what they got) as part of the total grade for the assignment. It was terrible. The biggest problem was the differences in groups. Some groups has much higher expectations than other groups. Even when performance was high, the grades were low. This was a serious point of contention among the students (as seen on end-of-course evaluations) and something I will never repeat.
Davidson’s approach does 2 things that make it much better: (1) they only judge whether the criteria were met or not (not giving a grade). A good rubric would make this a relatively easy task. (2) It focuses on frequent, smaller assignments rather than bigger projects.
I’m going to give this a try next semester, but I have to find the right class to do it with. I will teach a pedagogical English class that this might be perfect for (same class peer grading failed in last time). Smaller, bit-sized, weekly assignments graded by weekly “expert” groups.
A hole that I see in this is the way this compartmentalizes learning, though. Weekly topic groups don’t necessarily do well at synthesizing information from previous topics. These higher order assessments might be best implemented as midterm and final projects, larger assignments that require demonstration of knowledge gained throughout the semester.
In this case, there would be two parts, student-graded work and teacher-graded work. The percentage of these two would be around 80% and could be split in half (maybe), with attendance/participation rounding out the last 20%.
This is going to require a little more thought, but I like where it’s going. I want students to take more responsibility for their learning AND the learning experience their classmates have. I feel that being engaged as both producers and critics will motivate them to go beyond the simple requirements of the course and will provide the course with more diverse perspectives on teaching and learning language in Korea.
Korea’s ‘hourly lecturers’ struggle to make ends meet // and regret spending all those years and all that money getting their PhD
Korea’s ‘hourly lecturers’ struggle to make ends meet While South Korea’s economic upturn is being touted as a “model case” for economic recovery from the recent global economic slump, not everyone in the country is seeing the benefits of the alleged robust performance of the Asia’s fourth largest economy that would host this year’s G-20 summit, including some who are highly educated yet struggling their make ends meet.
Literally called “hourly lecturers” for their lecture-for-pay based contracts, the nation has many Ph.D. holders who are not hired full-time by a university for a college, but provide lectures.
via koreatimes.co.kr
This article is a good awareness raiser, but it doesn’t give some of the more important facts.
There are an abundance of PhDs in Korea. Most of those are looking for tenure-track professorships. These have traditionally provided good pay, status, and security.
In years past, when there were much fewer PhDs (and an explosive growth in students), getting a job was much easier. However, with the reverse being true now (many PhDs and a saturated student market) it is extremely difficult.
Hourly lecturers now commonly work at many universities at the same time. They fill any untended class available for roughly W1.5-2.0 million per semester (depending on school and program). The more ambitious of these lecturers may teach 6-10 courses at 5-6 universities. To make a living wage, you will sacrifice any semblance of a life (and, let’s face it, the quality of instruction has to suffer).
Through this sort of hustling, as well as volunteering with academic organizations and attempting to put together time to publish, they build their network and qualifications. Most, who continue to work this angle are likely to find a tenure-track position (somewhere in Korea if they are willing to leave Seoul). Many give up and settle for other types of jobs (or stay at home moms–and less often dads).
Here are some challenges that make it more difficult to eventually land a job.
(1) Your PhD. Where did you get it? If it isn’t a popular place (regardless of program quality) for professors in your field to have graduated from, you’ll like have trouble. This is one of those times when the old boy network is in full force. This is really true in Korea and elsewhere. Aside from that, if you went to a top program in the field, then you’re likely ok, too.
(2) Undergraduate. This is one of those hidden secrets in the Korean academia. If you didn’t do your undergrad at a top school in Korea, you are going to have a VERY difficult time finding a tenure-track position regardless of where you did your PhD and how well published you are. This is a one that even most Koreans don’t understand until they come back with degree in hand and confident that they have done all the right things to assure a good job.
(3) Location. Many universities in Seoul, but everyone wants to live/work there. If you’re not flexible on where you are willing to work, you’d better have the right background for numbers 1 and 2 above.
Discouraged yet? You’d better be. If you’re thinking about going to school for that name-your-popular-humanities-major-here PhD, think about this. You are going to go into great debt (or your parents are), you’ll spend at least 4 years abroad (but likely longer), you’ll come back to Korea and either have no job or have to hustle for at least a couple years (making less than 25 million a year), and then maybe, just maybe, you’ll find a professorship in a saturated education market that is resulting in the closing of scores of universities (in other words, your job isn’t safe). Don’t even get me started on the changing procedures of tenure, which are becoming more and more like those in the States (massive publication), but without the same reduction of class hours and the maintenance of an actual ten year framework (more than 2x as long as you’d find in the U.S.).
So, please. Don’t do it. Don’t go this direction. This is not the career path you really want. Spend the same amount of time and pursue directions that will provide you with more options professionally and more rewards financially.
If you do decide to run the gauntlet, good luck, and I hope to see you there.
Twitter user booked for election law violation
Twitter user booked for election law violation By Kwon Mee-yoo
Staff ReporterA Korean Twitter user was charged with violating the election law, the first time since the nation’s election watchdog said last month that it would crack down on unlawful political activities carried out through the poplar online social media.
The cyber crime investigation department of the Seoul Metropolitan Police Agency said Friday that they booked Kim, 43, nicknamed “doa” on Twitter, without physical detention for conducting an illegal poll and making the result public.
via koreatimes.co.kr
I’m not going to pretend to understand this law, but I’m glad the guy is fighting it. Of course, I am influenced by my upbringing in the US, but I feel that individuals should have the freedom to say what they like. While there are limits on free speech that I agree with (inciting harm, libel–untrue statements harmful to an individual or organization, and the such), I don’t agree with limited the speech of those who want to discuss their points of view. And in this case, this was simply a poll. What’s wrong with a poll?
Again, I don’t understand the specifics of the law, so I am open to be educated. I have to see this, though, as the continued assault on free speech by the Korean ruling class.
North Korea has plenty of doctors: WHO
North Korea has plenty of doctors: WHO
GENEVA (Reuters) – North Korea’s health system would be the envy of many developing countries because of the abundance of medical staff that it has available, the head of the World Health Organization said on Friday.
WHO Director-General Margaret Chan, speaking a day after returning from a 2-1/2 day visit to the reclusive country, said malnutrition was a problem in North Korea but she had not seen any obvious signs of it in the capital Pyongyang.
Judging the state of the country (North Korea) by the Pyongyang, is like going into a Marriott to report on homelessness. Pyongyang is reserved for the party’s supporters. This is a place where the people are provided for in a MUCH different way than those in the nether regions.
The WHO director, at least as reported here, has probably given the North the best source of propaganda in years. Congratulations on your naivete.
Teacher Average Salary Income – International Comparison
Check out this website I found at worldsalaries.org
http://www.worldsalaries.org/teacher.shtml# – Check out this site. Fun to look around and make comparisons.
This data really surprised me. I’m surprised that the average salary for American teachers is so high, particularly compared with the rest of the world. I would really like to see the range of salaries and regional disaggregation. If the average teacher is making $60,000/yr gross, I have a lot less sympathy for complaints about pay and workload.
The same database lists averages for many professions. Teachers rank up near the top. Professors average about $9,000 more per year. I don’t know if that makes me hopeful or not :-/