Students Say "President" Is the Least Trusted Profession... Even Lower Than Influencers

2023 Education Policy Awareness Survey Released on the 21st
60% of High School Students Oppose the Introduction of Descriptive Questions in the CSAT

Middle and high school students in South Korea have selected the president as the profession with the lowest level of trust.

According to the '2023 Education Policy Awareness Survey' released on the 21st by the Korea Educational Development Institute and the Education Policy Network, a survey on trust levels by occupation was conducted among 11,079 middle and high school students, and the occupation with the lowest trust level was the 'president' (22.7%).

The occupation with the highest trust level was 'school teacher' (86.8%), followed by 'prosecutors and police officers' (61.7%), 'judges' (55.6%), 'journalists' (37.6%), 'religious figures' (34.0%), 'influencers' (31.5%), and 'politicians' (23.4%).

In a question asking to rate trust on a 4-point scale, 'school teacher' scored the highest with 3.26 points, while 'president' recorded the lowest at 1.99 points. 'Politicians' scored 2.05 points, the second lowest after the president, and the trust level of 'influencers' was 2.23 points, higher than that of politicians and the president.

Among 2,064 high school students surveyed, 61.8% opposed the introduction of essay and descriptive evaluations in the College Scholastic Ability Test (CSAT). This is about three times the proportion of students who supported it (19.4%).

When asked in an open-ended question about reasons for opposing the introduction of essay and descriptive evaluations, 19.9% said "the exam becomes more difficult," 19.2% said "there is no clear grading standard, so objectivity decreases," and 16.1% claimed "adding descriptive evaluations increases students' burden."

Among those who supported the introduction of essay and descriptive evaluations, the most common opinions were "it has higher discriminative power than multiple-choice questions" (37.8%), "it allows students to express their own thoughts in writing" (14.5%), and "it helps improve thinking skills" (13.4%).

Meanwhile, this survey was conducted online from July 5 to 19 last year, targeting 13,863 elementary, middle, and high school students nationwide.