Assessment of Economic Education in Korea’s Higher Education

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.