A Comparative Study of State Social Policies on Education and Its Shadow in South Korea and Iran

Education and private tutoring activities particularly are under influence of state social policies. The paper uses term “social policy” to show macro social and political attitudes of each state toward education. This paper compares social policies concerning education and its shadow in six states of South Korea with their four counterparts in Iran from 1980 to 2010. An overview of each state’s policy in both countries provides two main similarities. First, during the last three decades, policies did not control the rapid expansion of the shadow education system. Second, the state policies indicated a contradictory situation which simultaneously limited and accelerated the expansion of private tutoring activities. Despite these similarities, state policies necessarily did not lead to the same results. While, change and transformation in the political structure in South Korea (i.e., from a totalitarian toward a neoliberal system) presumably has redefined the role of the shadow education system as a tool in the service of social and economic development of the country; In Iran, however, the political system, through a cyclical policy process (i.e., closed to semi-open to closed), seems to have accelerated a “brain drain” phenomenon as the outcome of private tutoring activities.