Reduction of the College Entrance Examination Special Selection

Each college and university will reduce its special selection from the 2003 academic year college entrance examination subjected to the current high school juniors. Also each competitive contest should be certified to be a factor for selection.

Korean Council for University Education (KCUE) settled a proposal of special selection certification system on May 8th.

Secretary general of KCUE, Lee Hyun-Chung stated, “As each college and university exceedingly extends special selections and too many competitive contests are running, the criteria for selection became vague and this only confuses the examinees. Hence we will reduce the types of special selection to the number of one third and will inspect various kinds of contests to let colleges utilize only certified competitive contests as a factor for selection.”

-How to reduce: According to the proposal, special selections that have ambiguous criteria such as ‘winner of beauty contest,’ which estimate inborn factors, or ‘broadcasting experience OO hours or more’ will be eliminated, but only special selections that estimate the acquired abilities from examinee’s effort will be utilized. Also the definition of speciality students is to be regulated on the basis of a consented perspective.

From the second half of this year they will inspect and deliberate on various kinds of competitive contest. Only the certified contests will be applied as factors for selection from the first semester of 2003 academic year at the occasional recruitment.

Lee said, “We will set right the reality of running unqualified competitive contests that are performed by private agencies, which advertise their contests as advantageous to the college entrance examination, or by small towns or townships. We started working to set criteria for certification through the deliberation of Steering Committee for University Admission System and Consulting Committee for University Admission Policies.”

-The present state of special selection and competitive contests: At the college entrance examination of 2002 academic year, 173 colleges and universities (except technology and industry colleges) will be scheduled to select 86,222 numbers of freshman (26.9% of the total number of recruitment) at the special selections of a prescribed number. Compared to that of the 2001 academic year, 14 colleges and universities, there will be an increase of 35,217 students. In recent years, there has been a steady increase.

There are largely about 30 types of special selection, including winning contestants, speciality students, late learners, inventors, license holders, fulltime housewives, etc. In the 2002 academic year, 121 colleges and universities will offer 63 kinds of special selection for speciality students, including language, science, information technology, acting, animation, etc. In addition, 34 colleges and universities will apply for various kinds of criteria in their extra special selections.

According to KCUE, among 580 numbers of major contests and license tests that are subjected to elementary, middle, and high school students by the basic period of the last year, colleges and other institutions that are not involved in the college entrance examination sponsor over 124 contests.

This year, examinees and parents of students feel insecure, for they do not participate in contests, although the numbers of contests and license tests keep increasing.

-Pervasive effect: It is prospected that while the types of special selection will be reduced by a large margin, the numbers of the selected will decrease within narrow limits. The Ministry of Education and KCUE plan to keep the basic purpose to sublate the grade-oriented uniform selection but to consider various factors in selection.

Kim Young-Il, the head of an evaluation office of Institute for Central Education Promotion, said, “Examinees groan under a heavy burden to become a winning contestant. In is necessary to examine appropriateness of the special selection and competitive contests. Also colleges and universities should mend their tendency of careless carrying out contests.”

dal@donga.com