National Youth Policy Institute in Korea(NYPI) and Asian Regional Association for Career Development(ARACD) held the biannually international conference to compare career education for youth among ten Asian countries or areas, such as Korea, Japan, Taiwan, Hong Kong, Singapore, Indonesia, Malaysia, India, Pakistan and Iran in 2017.
We had several findings from the presentations of these countries. Korea and Japan emphasize youth work experience and have shown their efforts to link with competencies as a result of work experience. But it is estimated that work experience is weakly linked with the curricula in both countries. Singapore, Hong Kong and Taiwan tend to integrate career education policies with their curricula and promote educational reforms, curriculum reforms, teaching and learning revamps, rather than emphasizing work experience like Korea and Japan. These countries do not provide youth with many work experiences compared to Korea and Japan. Even though Malaysia, Indonesia, and Iran have high secondary school enrollment rates and are also focusing on career education like Korea, Japan, Singapore, Taiwan and Hong Kong, they don’t seem to achieve yet sufficient results. They might be classified as types that emphasize TVET rather than career education. India and Pakistan have low secondary enrollment rates and do not seem to have reached their career education policy goals. But they continue to promote career education in the public or private sector.
We could say that a high secondary school enrollment rate should be premised on improving career education. On the other hand, in areas such as Korea, Japan, Singapore, Taiwan and Hong Kong with high secondary enrollment rates, career education is emphasized as a means to overcome the problem of excessive academic competitiveness. It seems that excessive academic competition may hinder activating career education.
