고학력화의 사회경제적 성과와 한계

Abstract

고등교육의 확장이 현대사회에 어떻게 기여해 왔는가에 대해서는 일치된 합의점이 없는 상태이다. 이에 고등교육의 확장이 어떠한 사회적 혹은 경제적 성과를 가져왔고, 그것이 갖는 한계점은 무엇인가를 종합적으로 살펴볼 필요가 있다.특히 기록적인 고등교육 팽창을 경험하였고, 그 시기가 경제 발전의 시기와 맞물려 있는 한국 사회에서 고학력화가 가져온 사회 경제적 성과가 무엇이며 어떻게 나타났는지를 점검하는 것은 고등교육 정책과 관련하여 매우 긴요한 일이다. 그러한 점검은 고등교육 팽창이 가져온 문제점을 찾는 것이기도 할 것이다. 본 고에서는 고등교육의 팽창으로 나타난 급격한 한국 사회의 고학력화가 경제적, 사회적으로 어떤 영향을 미쳤는지, 또한 대학교육 그 자체에는 어떤 영향을 미쳤는지를 살펴보고자 한다.

This study is an academic research on the socio-economic effects related higher education expansion in Korea. Korean society has witnessed the rapid expansion in higher education after 1980's. This study focuses on economic, social, and educational effects of higher education expansion. Major contents of the study can be summarized as follows. Korea has experienced the most rapid expansion in higher education in the world after 1990s. The recipients of higher education are increasing more in younger generations, especially among women and vocational high school graduates. According to Trow(1977)'s ideal type, Korea society has already entered the higher education universe era. The rapid high education expansion in Korea is caused by several factors. First of all, Koreans have got a lot of heart in education. The enthusiasms for education are always high, so people are usually desperate to get more education. In addition to this passion for education, Korea's economic development gives people enough wealth affording to get more and higher educations. And the differential of earnings between high school graduate and university graduate has been large enough to seduce student to get the more educations. Still more, the higher education institutes are usually private schools, so the universities have been supplied very easily in the society. The government also gave up its regulation to the number of higher education students in 1995. All these factors have caused Korean society to become the higher education universe society in a brief period. The expansion of higher education has brought many effects on Korean society. This study has focused only on the three aspects, economic, social, and educational effects. In terms of economic effect, the expansion of higher education has raised the level of human capital stock. This study calculates the human capital stock from 1980 to 2009, and the results is that the average annual growth rates of human capital stock were 1.51% for 1980's, 1.02% for 1990's, and 0.95% for 2000's. This decreasing growth rate of human capital stock comes from the higher education's rapid expansion in 1990's and 2000's. Confined in educational change, the average annual growth rates according to the change of people's educational attainments are 1.51% for 1980's, 1.05% for 1990's and 2000's. Despite of the rapid expansion of higher education in 1990's and 2000's, the human capital accumulation's speed didn't fall down in 1990's and 2000's. This fact means that some parts of rapid expansion of higher education have brought about accumulating the human capital. The expansion of higher education has contributed economic development in Korea. By estimating of growth account model, this study reveals that the school years which represent the accumulation of human capital stock affect the industrial growth with 0.1~0.22 coefficient. The coefficients of the variable of school years don't have significance in 1980's, but they are big figures in 1990's and they decrease a little in 2000's. But higher education's expansion has resulted in the low employment rate of university graduates in recent years. Some university graduates have got reluctantly the jobs which are available for high school graduates. Another bad effect of the expansion of higher education is the growing of the private educations not school based. And the employee's wages in the education industry are persistently decreasing, it means that the quality of education service has been falling down. In Korea, the earnings differentials between high school graduates and university graduates made the people ardent to get higher education. The wage differentials between high school graduates and university graduates are growing in 2000's. The private rate of return of university education decreased to 5% in 1993, increased to 8% in 2003, and reached 10% in 2010. This raising private rate of return of university education in recent years means that the demand for university graduates from the industries is persistently increasing in recent years. In terms of asset earnings rather than wages, the differentials of asset wealth between high school graduates and university graduates are larger than the differentials of wages. These asset wealth differentials have been affected by the changes of real estate prices, and the prices of real estate go rising up then the differentials have been enlarged much more. The more higher education expands, the larger variation gets appearing in the income distribute. These facts tell us that in Korea, the educational payment differential is clear and definite, so we expect the student will choose more higher education. The higher education is expected to affect the social capital of individual and society's. This thesis has not been dealt with until now. This study analyses the relationship between the higher education expansion and the social capital accumulation, like trust, voting, political concerns, social networks, social services, health, and satisfaction of life. The analysis results say that in Korea, individual achievement of higher education has correlation with only trust, but in Europe, individual achievement of higher education correlated with trust, political concerns, social service, health, and satisfaction of life. Individual higher education does not correlate with voting and social network in both Korea and Europe. Social achieving of higher education has significant relation with trust and political concerns in Europe, but does not related with the other social capital like voting, social service, social network, health, and satisfaction of life in Europe. The expansion of higher education in society does not contribute fully to accumulate the social capital in Europe. In Korea, the expansion of higher education in society doesn't have any relation with social capital, so Korean get only trust with achieving higher education as an individual. These results mean that higher education goes not necessarily with higher social capital. Especially in Korea, higher education has some problem as well as elementary and middle school education. Therefore first priority in education policy in Korea has to be the redemption of normal education. As the number of university student is increasing, the type of institute for higher education has been diversified. Some higher education institutes have been specialized to distinct purposes, and higher education institutes are diversified into many styles. Art, broadcasting, athlete, social welfare, and some kinds of technological training come into the higher education curriculum, then the programs and institutes for higher education have been plentiful and diverse. As higher educations expand, the most people get generally the higher education. But the high class people has achieved much more higher education than the low class has, hence the hierarchy of institutes for higher education has been created and structured firmly. In Korea, while higher education expands, the hierarchy which is measured by 'study ability examination score' has not been changed, but rather strengthen more firmly. In Korea, university students get diploma very easily without difficulties, and the quality of education in university could not be guaranteed. So the university diploma cannot work as a signal of ability in the labor market. The university hierarchy, university ranking or branding is the only signal used in the labor market, then the university ranking has been stabilized again. But the university ranking doesn't have anything to do with the quality of education, and it is a serious problem. It is important from what university they graduate, the high rank universities get the good student from the high school, then only give them diploma after four years. There are so many problems related with this, for example, excess competition, spreading private studies, the loss of education for the whole man, and the uniformity of higher education institutes. In conclusion, the expansion of higher education brought Korean society with good and bad effect. The good effects come from mainly economic point, like accumulating human capital and industry development. The bad effects are mainly social and educational aspects. The expansion of higher education has not been raising the social capital, so civil society has not been growing as mature as economic development level. The education itself has a hard time with many side effects followed the expansion of higher education. So the education reform policy is the most important and vital of the Korea's further development.