Nerd News: Financial Trouble and South Korean Students Going Abroad

Many South Korean students include time studying abroad as part of their educational plans, but the current money crunch is making that difficult. Take a look as the Korean economy and currency buckle:

In October, the Education Ministry said the number of elementary and secondary students going abroad fell in the first half of 2008 for the first time since the government started keeping count a decade ago. In a separate report, the central bank said spending on overseas education fell 5.8 percent in the same period from the year before, to $2.3 billion, the largest decline since the 1997 Asian financial crisis.

While job security and the overall slowing of the economy play a role, the biggest factor has been the rapidly falling won, education experts and students say. The currency's drop from a peak of nearly 900 per dollar in mid-2008 to about 1,370 per dollar now translates to a 50 percent increase in the price of foreign goods - like tuition, room and board, and airfare - in just a few months.

To be sure, Choi and others say, many South Koreans seeking advanced degrees, especially at top American or European universities, are likely to go anyway.

But a larger number of students enroll in short-term, often one-year programs, to study English or other languages. Last year, about 150,000 South Koreans went abroad for this kind of study. This year, the number is likely to fall 30 percent to 40 percent, Choi said.

There are all sorts of other concerns involved too both in the short and the long term. Read the article.