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Assessment of Economic Education in Korea’s Higher Education

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Assessment of Learning Outcomes in Higher Education

Part of the book series: Methodology of Educational Measurement and Assessment ((MEMA))

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Abstract

Economic education has occupied a preeminent and indispensable place in the university curricula in Korea for decades. Considered as one of the most rigorous and prestigious majors, economics departments in Korean universities have invariably attracted applicants of superior grades and qualifications. With this background, this chapter summarizes the current status of economic education in universities in Korea. This chapter also reviews the assessment tools designed to measure economic understanding along with their main characteristics and provide detailed information on the assessment efforts to measure economic literacy at the college level and their main results, more specifically, Test of Understanding of College Economics (TUCE), College Scholastic Ability Test (CSAT), and two nationally accredited qualification tests: the Test of Economic Sense and Thinking (TESAT) and the Test of Economic and Strategic Business Thinking (MK TEST). This chapter calls for a development of a standardized international assessment tool that can measure the economics understanding of college students and adults in hopes to more precisely identify the level of economics understanding of Korean college students by country to country comparison among their similarly situated international peers.

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Notes

  1. 1.

    See Hahn (2013) for more information on the trends of economic education in high schools and universities in Korea from 2005 to 2012 and Hahn and Jang (2010) for employment rates by departments.

  2. 2.

    The items (in Korean) can be obtained from http://www.suneung.re.kr/boardCnts/list.do?boardID=1500234&m=0403&s=suneung.

  3. 3.

    The National Assessment of Education Progress (NAEP) test in the United Sates recommends the distribution of 45% for microeconomics, 40% for macroeconomics, and 15% for international economics (Buckles and Walstad 2008).

  4. 4.

    The percentage of correct responses of test questions is not publicly released. The percentages presented in Table 8.5 are drawn from the consensus among authors and multiple institutions which collected a variety of relevant information.

  5. 5.

    The Ministry of Education, Science and Technology was renamed as the Ministry of Education in 2015. See Ministry of Education, Science and Technology (2012) and Ministry of Education (2015) for the national economics curriculum.

  6. 6.

    Most studies on male-female differences in economic literacy find that males performed better than females. For a comprehensive survey on the gender gap, see Siegfried (1979). Recently, Walstad and Buckles (2008) and Walstad (2013) also confirm that male students significantly outscored female students in the 2006 NAEP economics test. Similar gender effects were also founded in a cross-national study by Brückner et al. (2015).

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Author information

Authors and Affiliations

  1. Gyeongin National University of Education, Incheon, Korea

    Jinsoo Hahn

  2. Inha University, Incheon, Korea

    Kyungho Jang

  3. Bryant University, Smithfield, RI, USA

    Jongsung Kim

Authors
  1. Jinsoo Hahn
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  2. Kyungho Jang
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  3. Jongsung Kim
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Corresponding author

Correspondence to Jinsoo Hahn .

Editor information

Editors and Affiliations

  1. Johannes Gutenberg University, Mainz, Germany

    Olga Zlatkin-Troitschanskaia

  2. Johannes Gutenberg University, Mainz, Germany

    Miriam Toepper

  3. Humboldt-Universität zu Berlin, Berlin, Germany

    Hans Anand Pant

  4. Humboldt-Universität zu Berlin, Berlin, Germany

    Corinna Lautenbach

  5. Johannes Gutenberg University, Mainz, Germany

    Christiane Kuhn

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Hahn, J., Jang, K., Kim, J. (2018). Assessment of Economic Education in Korea’s Higher Education. In: Zlatkin-Troitschanskaia, O., Toepper, M., Pant, H., Lautenbach, C., Kuhn, C. (eds) Assessment of Learning Outcomes in Higher Education. Methodology of Educational Measurement and Assessment. Springer, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-74338-7_8

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  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-74338-7_8

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