ScholarWorks@숙명여자대학교

초록

The purpose of this paper is two-folds: first, it examines what we have achieved in women’s higher education in Korea during the last 100 years, and second, it discusses current issues and problems facing the further development of the quality of women’s higher education and what we need to do in order to resolve those issues.A couple of noticeable findings are first, there is a consistent gender difference in college enrollment rate and advancement rate from high school to college over the years, and this is a clear indication that there remains continuing gender issues and problems in the college environment in Korea. Second, the data also show that the number of students entered two-year and four-year colleges show different increase patterns by gender. While men were more benefited by the expansion of four-year colleges/universities, women were more benefited by the expansion of two-year colleges. As a result, male students still dominate the highest positions in the Korean education system and in the society, and women students have substantially less education than men, and consequently a lower status than men in the society. Considering the fact that we see more rapid increases of college educated women in the labor market in recent years, it is very important that we improve our higher education system and develop better programs to better fit female students’ educational needs and aspirations. This means that not only do we need to try harder to improve the contents and quality of women’s higher education, but also we need to set up strong support systems for both female college students and graduates.

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