Systematical linkage among Korea’s vocational education institutions of secondary and higher levels including specialized high schools, Meister schools, and vocational colleges is the core basis of establishing open life-long education system that enables smooth transitions from school to workplaces and from workplaces to schools.
The purpose of this study is to trace current situation of previous policy practices, successful cases, and problems found in the middle of practice procedures regarding specialized high schools, Meister schools, and vocational colleges, thereby suggesting policy adjustments for improvements. To achieve this purpose, this study identifies the objectives and the practice backgrounds of each policy with careful examination of current situation, examines positive effects of policy promotion with successful case studies, and analyzes existing problems and complementary factors among promotion procedures. Research methods used in this study are analysis of press and research results of each policy by monitoring, recognition surveys of related officials, and hosting expert conferences, this study monitored promotion status of each vocational education policy.
The performance of each vocational education policy and current status and problems, and our suggestions for each policy are summarized as follows.
First, current major performance of Meister schools policy are the education curriculum reform for industrial demand, selection of competitive students who has potentials and challenged aptitude, hiring principals and teachers from industrial field, securing enough number of teachers which is necessary for Young Meister, improving industrial applicability of teachers and reinforcing competence, and signing industrial-educational contracts with successful industries and improving corporational activities.
Major problem found in the promotion procedures of Meister school was the one regarding military services, which becomes the main obstacle for hiring graduates who had not finished their military duties according to the Meister Employment Agreement. This represents the problem of reduced possibility of employment for male students due to corporate tendency to avoid employing graduates who had not finished their military duties. Further improvement plans include establishing competitive training system through subject multiplication of Meister training, structuring job application supporting system for graduates of Meister schools, securing credibility of competence that Meister graduates possess by reforming qualification system, providing incentives for successful corporations of industrial-educational cooperation, expanding budgets and promising stable supports, providing competent teachers, establishing program improvement system for each school based on frequent self-evaluation, establishing support system for continuous education, solving problems regarding military services of graduates, and improving quality management of employment.
Second, in case of the improvement of employment competency project, several issues were found; it is necessary to reinforce employment function related industrial-customized curriculum reform, expand opportunity to have field internship programs with systematical improvements of appropriate job opportunities, and promoting organizational linkage among informational system of work-education-qualification related fields. For improving project performance, it is necessary to achieve promotion and provision of appropriate signals for goals of specialized high school through successful visioning as a skillful worker, expertise reinforcement of workforce graduating specialized high schools, inducing improvement for corporate personnel system, and searching and expanding decent jobs that are appropriate for workforce graduating from specialized high schools.
Third, the issues related to special admission system for employees, one of policies of ‘employment first, study later’, were as follows: providing expansion methods of acceptance range of industrial experience education, expanding tax reduction benefits and financial supports for workforce-development-centered corporations, developing methods for reducing employment terms from current 3 years to 2.5-2 years in the future, expanding establishment of related field courses in colleges, providing comprehensive operation methods for cooperating with existing divisions by implementing appropriate supports, aiming for maturing corporate culture and establishing program development plans regarding the expansion of education opportunity for residers of HR division, establishing operation methods to run employment program cooperating with high schools, industrial fields, and colleges, implementing individual consulting system for residers based on tracing surveys of students who are employed for their 4th year, implementing and operating programs to alleviate relative exclusiveness of current students and workers of specialized high schools, establishing operation methods for field- practices-centered education curriculum through securing professors with industrial field experience, adjusting capacity through inducing structural adjustments in colleges and establishing supportive policies for reforming divisions aiming for special admission tasks for residers.
Fourth, the expected results of WCC project, aiming for making Korean vocational colleges as ones in World Class College(WCC), include securing probabilities for successful vocational colleges of international level through improvement of quality of education, selecting successful vocational colleges and providing environment apt for securing self-determination of college operation, inducing positive responses from vocational colleges officials, and securing probability of establishing systematical infrastructure for Korean vocational education. Further direction for WCC project was found to be vitalizing businesses and securing additional budgets for active performances, expanding assessments, adopting adjustments of particular assessment index, industrial categorizing based on college specialties and expanding selection ranges, and setting up medium and long-term operation direction of businesses.