South Korea fights academic pedigree hiring bias that ‘turns everyone into losers’

It has been just over a month since Lee Hyun-jun* was discharged from his mandatory military service, but the 22-year-old college student already feels he has hit an invisible wall regarding his future.“Whenever I search for jobs, internships or fellowship programmes on online platforms, they always ask for the name of your university,” Lee told This Week in Asia.“Looking at the comments section, people are saying most places prioritise which school you graduated from. They say you might as well give up if you’re from a regional university outside Seoul.”For the education major, who attends a university in the southwestern city of Gwangju, the remarks hit uncomfortably close to home.“I thought that I would finally be able to live a life I wanted based on my skills and efforts, but I realised that society just gave you a rank that you had to wear longer than your time in the military.”In South Korea, universities are broadly divided into two tiers: “in Seoul” schools and those outside the capital. At the top of the hierarchy is “SKY” – an acronym for Seoul-national-university" class="entity-link entity-organization" data-entity-id="22610" data-entity-type="organization">Seoul National University, Korea University and Yonsei University – all based in Seoul.Police escort a student taking the College Scholastic Ability Test to school in Seoul. Photo: Reuters