The Faults of Neoliberal Education: Examining International Students’ Experiences within Korean Higher Education

Abstract

The overwhelming negativity towards neoliberalism has focused on policies that have reduced academic life to strictly corporate terms and how the customer education model has led to the demise of civic and democratic values. Following Western universities' models, Korean education has adopted the same values and policies, inheriting the subsequent issues and problems that lie therein. This paper continues the call for resisting neoliberalism by exposing its negative impact on the acculturation experiences of international students in Korea. The study participants used transactional language to describe their feelings of marginalization and invisibility and the impoverished ways their host university treated them. Utilizing a qualitative case study methodology set within the framework of neoliberalism, this paper documents how neoliberal policies have been ideologically ingrained in Korean higher education. It highlights the necessity of reforming current policies to deter acculturative stress. It is hoped that the findings inspire resistance to the neoliberal ideology that Korean policymakers have subconsciously followed.

Received: 23 December 2023 / Accepted: 19 February 2024 / Published: 5 March 2024