The government is working to increase the number of employed high school graduates and plans to provide college education opportunities for them after they enter the workforce.

Under the plan, "Employ first and college education after" the government is planning to vitalize high school graduates' employment, which in turn helps small and mid-sized (SME) companies with their manpower shortages.

The plan comes amid the high unemployment rate among college graduates and a shortage of manpower at SMEs.

The trend has inevitably created a labor "miss-match" nationwide.

Youth unemployment has been rising in recent years. In the first quarter of this year, youth unemployment reached 10 percent, up two percentage points from 2012, according to data from the Hyundai Research Institute.

The Ministry of Employment and Labor recently made a prediction on the next decade of the supply and demand for workers. It state that there will be an oversupply of 75,000 college graduates and a shortage of 133,000 high school graduates in the workforce within the next 10 years.

However, most Korean students are taking their chances and going for college right after graduation _ 69 percent of high school graduates moved on to college just this year alone.
On the other hand, only 51 percent of specialized vocational high school graduates went straight into employment.

To reduce the miss-match the government has been working with SME's to introduce a policy that helps high school graduates land a job and enable them to receive a college education, while employed at the firm.

"Employ first and enter college after" policy consists of ways to vitalize employment of high school students, innovate vocational education, reduce higher education costs for high school student employers and encourage a company culture to allow employees to receive college education, according to the education ministry.

"We will promote employment opportunities for students and we will work towards developing the young employees to grow into experts," Choi Su-gyu, vice minister at the Ministry of SME's and startups.

Source: http://www.koreatimes.co.kr/www/nation/2018/06/181_250570.html

Commentary by Youngah Kim, Education Services Manager, British Council in Korea:

As most of liberal candidates got re-elected in national election in early June, president Moon's policies around Education/employability is gaining large support from ministries. One example is that the Incumbent liberal education superintendents dominated elections in key areas around the nation. Cho Hee-yeon, the incumbent superintendent of the Seoul Metropolitan Office of Education (SMOE), has been re-elected for his second term. He has been trying to abolish specialised foreign high schools to avoid rankings among high school students, and focused on vocational and more practical education models. He believes that spending lots of money on private education is not the right direction to take, and is trying to cooperate with Ministry of Labour to facilitate employment of high school students. According to Hyundai Research Statistics, about 70% of high school graduates enter college/university after graduation, and when they are ready to come into a job market, competition is fierce which leads to low employment rate. This is why the government encourages students to get a job first, and sponsor university education after they work for three years.

Although it looks like a positive plan to raise employment rate of young people, it is possible that this policy could just end up as a policy. If it is promoted through government channels, some small-medium sized corporations will welcome students, and it will raise interest/demand of more practical and vocational related courses. However, since Korea is traditionally a university degree focused society, the wage discrimination between high school graduates and university graduates is significant. Also, because high school graduates face limitations in terms of social mobility, they might have disadvantages around promotion opportunities. If negative feedback continues to rise, Korean students are likely to go back to traditional high school to university route, and possibly pursue PG degree in a foreign country to make their resume more attractive.