<P> The South Korean government and universities desire to improve the international rankings of the domestic universities . Attempts by the South Korean government are being made to improve the situation . Another solution may be as simple as making it fundamentally more attractive for highly qualified foreign professors and researchers to come to work and more importantly to stay in South Korea . All in all, the South Korean Ministry of Education hopes to remedy the problem via the' National Project Toward Building World Class Universities' . The project is designed to attract highly qualified foreign professors and researchers to South Korean universities to improve their international rankings . </P> <P> South Korean university education often continues traditions remaining from the medieval Korean civil service examinations which entitled ambitious young men to join a clerical aristocracy . Until fairly recently many South Korean university students perceived the difficult and unpleasant entrance examination to be an end in itself, with the four years after treated as a reward . Thus South Korean universities were largely lacking in rigor with many students spending their time socializing, drinking, and dating after years of such activities being discouraged . In the past decade, however, due to South Korea's increasing globalization and inflows of foreign faculty, work expectations are more closely resembling western universities and plagiarism, once openly tolerated, is becoming stigmatized . Rural and lower - tier universities, however, still in many cases function as degree factories . </P> <P> A network of Meister Schools has been developed to revamp South Korea's vocational education system that is specifically designed to prepare youths to work in high - skilled manufacturing jobs and other fields . The schools are based on the German - style Meister schools, to teach bright youngsters to become masters of a technical trade . Meister schools were set up to tackle the nations high youth unemployment rate as millions of young South Korean university graduates remain idle instead of taking up a trade while managers of small and medium businesses complain of skilled trade shortages . Many of these Meister schools offer a wide range of trades and technical disciplines that offer near guarantee of employment to graduates with an industry - supported curriculum design, with focus on developing skills required by various trades . The government of South Korea has taken initiatives to improve the perception of vocational training and combat the negative stigma attached to manual and technical work . In addition, vocational streams have been integrated with academic streams to allow a seamless transition to universities in order to allow further advancement if a young South Korean chooses to pursue higher education . Meister schools offer apprenticeship based training as an alternative beyond the traditional university takes place at vocational high schools, community and polytechnic colleges . Meister schools also offer employment supportive systems for specialized Meister high school students . The South Korean government has established an "Employment First, College Later" philosophy whereas after graduation students are encouraged to seek employment first before making plans for university . With changing demands in the Information Age workforce, global forecasts show that by 2030, the demand for vocational skills will increase in contrast to the declining demand for unskilled labor largely due to technological advances . In 2010, the Meister schools chose a total of 3,600 students for technical education and apprenticeships so that they can develop expertise in fields such as shipbuilding, mechanical engineering, semiconductor manufacturing and medical equipment . Graduates of Meister high schools have been successful in the job market and are flooded with full salary job offers from companies . Boosting employment for young people through high quality vocational education has become a top priority for the Park administration, since youth unemployment is roughly three times higher than the national average . </P> <P> Graduates from vocational high schools have been successful in navigating through South Korea's highly competitive and sluggish job market . Many graduates both quantitatively and qualitatively found more employment opportunities in a number of industry sectors across the South Korean economy . Despite promising employment prospects and good pay offered by vocational education that rival the income of many university graduates, negative social attitudes and prejudice towards technicians and vocational high school students are stigmatized, treated unfairly and are still looked down upon . There were also concerns about discrimination against people with lower educational backgrounds, a long - standing tendency of South Korean employers . The negative social stigma associated with vocational careers and not having a university degree also continues to remain deep rooted in South Korean society . </P>

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