Learning to be equal
South Korea's top universities are at war with the government. The egalitarian administration wants them to treat all potential new students as equals, no matter which school they have attended, in an effort to help reduce the nation's wide regional variations in everything from income to education. Under the policy, the best students from impoverished provincial schools would have the same chance of getting into an elite university as the top students from Seoul's posh Gangnam area.
Of course, elite universities oppose the move, complaining that the system would stop them selecting the best students, because high school grades are inflated nationwide. They argue that the egalitarian system is not only unrealistic, but also detrimental to the nation's academic standards, which have declined steadily in recent years.
In fact, the nation's top three universities - Seoul National University, Yonsei University and Korea University - are not included in the list of best universities around the world, or even in Asia.
Against this backdrop, some elite universities have been found to have discriminated against students from provincial areas and northern Seoul - which lags behind the south - during the college admission process.
The progressive government, backed by an equally progressive teachers' union, condemned the universities, and threatened to phase out their financial support.
The government's solution to the problem seems to be rather unreal. In return for treating all high schools the same, the administration has set up several across the nation that specialise in foreign language or science. They accept only the top students, many of whom go on to study at elite universities in South Korea, the United States, and elsewhere.
The problem is that there are only a small number of these specialist schools. Demand is high, but the government is reluctant to set up many more as it believes this would go against its basic policy of education equality. In fact, equality is the primary philosophy of President Roh Moo-hyun's administration.
A long-time outsider in South Korea's elite society, Mr Roh wants to ensure that the less privileged have the same opportunities in life. His plan to relocate the administrative capital from Seoul to the southern town of Gongju reflects his philosophy for an end to the status quo. Mr Roh may mean well, but in this world of endless competition, it sounds too ideal. There are always winners and losers, whether it is for university places or in business. Instead of eliminating winners, the government should be helping the losers.
