Why private academies cost an arm and a leg

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Why private academies cost an arm and a leg

Published: 18 Feb. 2025, 20:00

PARK YONG-SEOK

A total of 249 public and private schoolteachers have been caught selling mock exam questions to private academies and earning a total of around 21.3 billion won ($14.7 million) over six years, the Board of Audit and Inspection (BAI) said Tuesday. According to the audit, the transactions typically began by private cram schools obtaining a list of authors of EBS textbooks or using personal connections to contact teachers capable of creating mock tests. The institutions and teachers then agreed on the pricing depending on the type and difficulty of the questions.
Some of these teachers were found to have leaked EBS texts before they were published and used the same questions they had sold to cram schools in school exams, while others participated as College Scholastic Ability Test (CSAT) question committee members despite their illicit deals with private academies.[Park Yong-seok]