Correct the imbalance at high schools

Whimoon High School — a private school with an autonomous curriculum in the posh Gangnam District neighborhood in southern Seoul — runs just two humanities classes out of its 10 senior classes. Next year, it will be slashed to one. When excluding its sports club students, only 10 would fall under the humanities division. Korea has stopped separating students into humanities and STEM (science, technology, engineering and math) categories. Students fall into the humanities category if they choose probability and statistics in the math section for the College Scholastic Ability Test (CSAT), and the STEM category if they choose calculus and geometry for the exam.

Out of 59 classes at five private autonomous high schools in Gangnam and Seocheo districts in southern Seoul, 44 are in the STEM category. The phenomenon even spreads to public high schools across the nation. The ratio of STEM applicants that took up 30 percent in the 2019 CSAT exceeded 50 percent for the first time in the latest test for 2024 college admission.

Changes in student preference cannot be blamed. STEM students should naturally increase due to greater job opportunities in the high-tech society. But the failure in college entrance policy has also fueled the bias.

There is a greater merit in being in STEM when managing the grade point average (GPA) and CSAT score due to a much larger pool of students. After the cross-sectional option was added in 2022, a student taking the STEM division in math received 2 to 3 points higher than the average score in the math section of humanities division. In the latest exam taken in November, the gap widened to maximum 11 point difference. The standard scoring system that should lessen the varying risks in selective subjects only worsened the divide due to the failure in differentiating the standard of test questions.

The ripple effect is widening. The competition rate in foreign-language and international schools shot up this year after several years of waning. Because humanities classes are becoming rarer in general schools, students wishing to study humanities are entering foreign language or international high schools that by regulation cannot run STEM-devoted classes. The problem is getting worse since these students have the potential to apply for STEM departments at colleges through their cross-sectional admission. More students are also opting to drop out of high schools to take the CSAT after going through a separate school qualification exam.

The National Education Commission recently recommended the Education Ministry eliminate selective subjects in math from the 2028 CSAT. In the meantime, the education authorities must ensure a fair level of difficulty for CSAT questions, which sent a wrong message to high school students. They must stop experimenting with over 300,000 test-takers every year.