Korea's Overeducation Crisis

The South Korean educational system is suffering from an unprecedented overeducation crisis. This book 1) casts light on the dark side of Korea's educational expansion - namely its increased unemployment or underemployment among college graduates; 2) offers the Korean case as a cautionary tale to other countries uncritically engaged in populist educational expansion; and 3) calls into question the rhetoric of the education industry that more schooling will pay off. The approach is historical and sociological, going beyond the confines of education studies and incorporating a variety of relevant findings from different disciplines into the analysis. This would be the first book in English not only on the subject of Korea's overeducation crisis, but for treating it from historical and sociological perspectives. This book is critical in perspective, but constructive in orientation; it is the authors' aims for readers to think positively and differently about education even if it is not everything it promises to be.