This study aims to examine the necessary evaluation factors and methods based on the cases of foreign countries when admission officers select students and, at last, to seek the application possibilities on admission policy of Korea. Also, by investig...
This study aims to examine the necessary evaluation factors and methods based on the cases of foreign countries when admission officers select students and, at last, to seek the application possibilities on admission policy of Korea. Also, by investigating the evaluating attitude and perception of admission officers, this study anticipates problems which can be generated from admission officer system, it intends to provide suggestions about the education for admission officers.
Therefore, this study focuses on examining the universities which are executing admission officer system, the characteristics of admission officers, and the current situations of admission officer system in practice as well as the contents of duties, abilities and qualifications of admission officers in the field. Moreover, this study purposes to analyze various opinions about how the admission officer system will influence on education development of Korea and to discuss about the plans and suggestions for the successful settlement of the system.
Research problems set for the goal of this study are; First, understanding the current situations and characteristics(location, size, type of foundation, and time of selection) of the universities which are enforcing admission officer system; Second, understanding the characteristics of admission officer such as sex, age, education, career, route of employment, salary and contract status; Third, examining current situations of admission officer system in practice; Fourth, analyzing the duties and general perceptions about the qualification and attitude of admission officers; Fifth, analyzing the level of satisfaction and understanding of admission officers about admission officer system.
In this study, we set the admission officers and universities which enforced admission officer system in 2008 as the study population, sent questionnaires to 155 admission officers in 40 universities and collected questionnaires from 72 admission officers that count 46.5% and from 28 universities which count 70.0%. In the result of questionnaire analysis, first of all, the number of private universities enforcing admission officer system is twice that of national or public universities. In addition, 26 of schools are located around the capital, Seoul area, and other metropolitan cities, which means low participation of other universities in medium-small sized cities.
The number of admission officers tends to be bigger in the universities located in Seoul area than in metropolitan and medium-small sized cities. Also, the bigger the size of school is, the more the number of admission officers shows in private universities than in national or public universities.
Second of all, the age range of admission officer is distributed between twenties and forties and over80 percent of the officers hold more than a master’s degree. Moreover, most former work records of admission officers are directly or indirectly related to university or education. More than 80 percent of admission officers entered the university through the job posting, and 75 percent of admission officers had relevant career as admission officer within six months. Half of admission officers had experience in admission affairs, and 40.8 percent have the title based on position rank at the workplace. 80 percent of admission officers receive their salary between thirty million won and fifty million won, and this goes up in accordance with their educational background or with the contract condition such as regular workers. Over 85 percent of vadmission officers are working as irregular workers, and related to this point, a lot of admission officers insist the imminent legal or institutional securities for the safe settlement of the system. Most of admission officers majored in sociology, liberal arts and education, and few of them majored in science, engineering and arts. Third of all, according to the survey, most of universities do not have independence in their organization and duty of admission officers, and they just follow the precedent basis of relevant department and administration in establishing the basis of student selection. In most universities, 2 or 3 admission officers participate in examining and selecting students, and the degree of influence and score reflection on the student selection according to the judgment of admission officers are fairly distributed between 20 and 60 percent. Moreover, the standard of student selection emphasizes non-academic factors such as experiences in non-curriculum area, essays, and special activities.
Fourth of all, admission officers think much of evaluation and selection of students, as well as planning, researching, organizing of admission process. They also importantly consider planning the standard and measurement of evaluation, and analyzing admission documents. Compared to that, the importance of publicity and counseling about admission process turns out to be very low. The education for admission officers is mostly held in the way of training by institutions such as Korean Council for University Education rather than by individual university itself. It shows very poor educational system of Korea compared to the United States, which highly requires much deeper education for admission officers so that they can possess more methodological knowledge in evaluation. Also, the survey tells us that the frequency and duration of training are twice in continuous schools than in newly-opened schools.
Fifth of all, the better the understanding of admission officer system which admission officers expect is, the higher the level of satisfaction turns out. As the result of perception and satisfaction according to the characteristics of universities and individuals, we have found that there are certain differences among groups in sex, the size of school, and motivation of employment of admission officers. Especially, based on the presence of independency given to admission officers, there are specific differences in perception and satisfaction about the admission officer system.
In conclusion, for the successful settlement of admission officer system, a better workplace environment should be established through legal and institutional securities. Furthermore, by arousing proper publicities and leading changes in social understanding about admission officer system, we need to help general people to think that the admission officer system will bring positive effects on our whole society and education. For this, the training education by individual university and Korean Council for University Education should be developed in both quality and quantity. Therefore, admission officers should voluntarily participate in those improvements, also they should take up a positive attitude in student selection in each university.