8 years ago
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Obama again praises S. Korea for ‘paying teachers the way they pay doctors’
During U.S. President Barack Obama’s speech on Wednesday regarding a new government initiative to bring high speed internet access to low-income groups, the topic of South Korea’s education system came up. “In South Korea they pay their teachers the way they pay their doctors,” he said in front of an audience at Durant High School in Durant, Okla. “They consider education to be at the highest wrung of the professions.”
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I remember reading about Kim Ki-hoon a while back, and it seems like the situation is a little more complicated than just "teachers get paid better".
At least from the articles I've read on it, the reason teachers are paid more is because of a massive tutoring industry. The need to get into the best schools drives parents to pay for tutoring for their students, including what seems to be quite lucrative video tutoring (think Khan Academy). From what I've read this leads to multi-million dollar salaries for teachers, but it's driven by a national obsession with getting into highly competitive schools.
It may be a better system (I suspect it has significant upsides), but it's definitely a little more complicated than just teachers getting paid better.