Building Cooperative Links
Lifelong career development is still, to a large extent, a simple rhetoric in that career development of the employed people is not fully emphasized, career development of the elderly is in its infancy, and services for supporting career development of students and adults is discussed separately. The Ministry of Education and Human Resources and the Ministry of Labor need to work much more closely with one another. For more effective coordination of the two ministries, it is necessary to build a
clear co-ordination mechanism for key officials. There have been joint committees to discuss policies for youth unemployment, but little has been done to promote close coordinationbetween the two ministries.
In addition to ministerial links, local level links are also required.
Provincial education offices, comprehensive employment security centers, colleges and universities should collaborate much more closely via the exchange of information and services.
There also need to be closer links between KRIVET and the Central Employment Information Offices. Though CEIO develops excellent materials and information, they lack an educational perspective. Through collaboration, CEIO can benefit from KRIVET researcher’s educational professionalism, and the two organizations can generate a synergy for supporting career development for various target groups.
Consolidating Career Development Guidelines
To support career development for all, from students to the elderly, national guidelines for career development should be established. They should include goals, contents, and methods of career development for each age group. Based on these guidelines, curriculum for career education can be developed, programs can be designed, and curriculum for training professionals can be constructed.
National Career Development Guidelines of the U.S.A. and Blueprint for Life/Work Designs of Canada are good examples. In the development of BLWD, the NLWC (National Life/Work Center) performed a leading role in cooperation with HRDC (Human Resources Development Canada), IC (Industry Canada) and various other professional groups (these included Canadian Labour Force Development Board, Canada Career Information Partnership, Canadian Career Consortium, Canadian Career Development Foundation, Canada WorkinfoNET). KRIVET made an attempt to develop similar national career guidelines under the consignment of the Ministry of Education and Human Resources Development, but it revealed certain limitations, especially since various organizations related to career guidance did not participate in the process. Therefore, future endeavors to revise these guidelines should be based on a national cooperating mechanism for career guidance.
Classifying Levels of Career Guidance Professionals
Staffs for career guidance widely vary in their level of professionalism. In schools, teachers who are in charge of counseling have either master’s degrees or counseling teacher qualifications as a result of on-the-job training.
However, their professionalism is somewhat general rather than being focused on career counseling. Career education is provided by teachers with various majors and they often tend to be insufficient to support the career development of students. On-the-job training programs are provided mainly by provincial offices, KRIVET, and CEIO. Because these institutes have limited resources to cover all of the training needs, alternative ways to expand the scope of training are currently being considered. For example, KRIVET is conducting a project to develop an e-learning program on career education for teachers.
Career guidance staff in colleges and universities can be classified into two groups. One group comprises of counselors, who have master degrees in counseling, but did not have training geared specifically for career counseling.
Therefore, master degrees in counseling need to include more courses in career development. The other group comprises of universities staff members, who happen to be in charge of providing employment information and administrative support, but have little or no specific career counseling training.
In order to develop their competencies, more opportunities for training need to be provided and they need to stay longer in career guidance positions instead of being transferred frequently through the personnel transfer and rotation system.
Career counselors in employment security centers mostly have vocational counseling qualifications, which do not mandatorily require a master’s degree different from other counseling related qualifications. They are on renewable one-year contracts with modest salaries. It is also necessary to provide training for them and improve their employment conditions.
It is also recommended that a national competence framework for various levels of career guidance be established, based upon which training curriculum can be developed, and the effects of training can be evaluated.
Need-Driven Program Development
KRIVET and CEIO currently develop career guidance programs for various targeted groups. In addition, local education research offices develop programs for schools and private companies develop programs for universities and adults. Most of these programs are, however, targeting a wide range of people, and do not reflect the specific needs of various groups within the same age range. In order to help professionals in career guidance provide high quality services, it is important to have programs and reliable information corresponding to the specified needs of various groups such as drop-outs, technical high school students with learning difficulties, college students with learning difficulties, workers in small companies, and the elderly.
Various types of learning can be applied to these programs: self-directed learning on the web; group activities; person-to-person counseling; and work experience. Since Korea has very strong infrastructure for web-based learning, prospects are high for self-directed web based learning systems for career development. KRIVET has developed web-based career exploration programs including ‘Aro Junior’ for elementary school children, ‘Aro Plus’
for secondary school students, and ‘Career Vision’ for university students.
These systems contain psychological tests for self-knowledge, vocational and educational information and tips for career decision-making. These elements are articulated with each other and services are provided free of charge via CareerNet. Individuals can keep records of their career exploration, and compare the history of their activities.
Accurate and useful information on jobs is in high demand in career counseling and self-directed career exploration. This information should be able to connect labor and education markets, be qualitative as well as quantitative, and reflect local characteristics. To produce such information, a systematic mechanism needs be established not only at a national level, but also at a local level. More appropriate systems for the various interested groups need to be developed and utilized.
An inter-agency agreement, identifying areas of potential collaboration and procedures for such collaboration among KRIVET, CEIO, local educational research offices, and private sector organizations would be beneficial. In addition, the results of using these various types of career
guidance programs should be periodically systematically monitored and evaluated to ensure continuous improvement of the programs.
Toward Localization and Privatization
In Korea, it may be too early to discuss the localization and privatization of career guidance services because localization has just started and privatization, although it is ongoing, remains limited in scope. However, these trends are expected to continue. Local education offices and wide-area comprehensive employment security centers, and private sectors are expected to play greater roles. For localization, an articulated plan for role sharing between central and local officials is needed at the ministerial level.
In terms of privatization, it is necessary to build a system for monitoring the conduct of organizations in the private sector, for reinforcement of quality services, for regulation of inappropriate services, and for allocation of roles between the public and private sectors.