사회이동성 제고를 위한 교육정책 과제

Abstract

On the premise that education is the most important social mechanism to foster the social mobility and to prevent intergenerational transmission of poverty, this paper provides some empirical evidence of the state of students from poor families and propose policy recommendations for fostering social mobility through education. Children from the poor families have limited accesses to the pre-school education, and to the private tutoring in the primary and secondary education. Partly due to these limited accesses, students from poor families show relatively lower performances in the college entrance exam, and thus have lower chances to enter better colleges. They are more likely to remain unemployed after graduating colleges and to suffer from job mismatch even when they are employed. The fundamental policy response should start from providing high quality pre-school education, with more subsidies to the children from the poor families. Providing high-quality regular class in the elementary and secondary education is the basic requirement, but for the students from poor families after-school programs should be added. We should admit that it is hard to lessen the educational gap in the higher education. Instead of providing too much subsidy for the higher education, we should focus on the higher quality, especially through reducing the portion of highschool graduates who are entering college, and through establishing new innovative type of colleges providing high quality vocational education.