Economic Education in Korea: Current Status and Changes

Abstract

The authors describe key aspects of precollege and undergraduate economic education in Korea. They show that precollege students seem to have low economics literacy due to problems with the curriculum and insufficient training of teachers. At the undergraduate level, they show that economics departments have more male students than female students and that the employment rate for economics majors is lower than for business majors. They hope to draw more of Korean economists' attention to research initiatives in economic education.

Keywords:

• economics curriculum
• enrollment
• student knowledge
• teacher preparation

JEL Codes:

• A21
• A22
• I21

Acknowledgments

The authors thank seminar participants at the 2009 International Economic Education Symposium at San Francisco for valuable comments.

Notes

1. The percentage of female teachers at secondary schools rose to 52.6 percent in 2008 from 39.8 percent in 1999. We expect that the imbalance of teachers by gender will be deepened because women show a higher appointment rate for teachers. For example, the percentage of newly appointed female teachers at national or public secondary schools is 91 percent in Seoul.

2. The two journals have different periods of publication: TRCE has published quarterly since 2005, and the KJEE is published biannually. This difference, however, does not account for the difference in the number of articles, because the average number of articles per issue was 13 in TRCE until 2004, which is twice as many as in the KJEE.