Even if grades are similar, desired occupations vary depending on parents’ educational background and economic background.

Even if the grades were similar, there were differences in the jobs students desired in the future depending on their family circumstances, such as their parents' educational background and economic power.

The higher the parents' socioeconomic status, the higher the rate of people wishing to pursue a professional career, and there was a clear gap in career exploration activities such as searching for college admission information and career counseling.

On the 15th, the results of this study were published in the Korea Educational Development Institute's report titled 'Analysis of the Impact of Career Education Experience on the Gap in Career Aspirations According to Socioeconomic Status'.

The researchers used Korean student data from the 2018 and 2022 Performance Assessment for Academic Affairs (PISA) to analyze the relationship between socioeconomic status and desired occupation, which combines parents' educational background and occupation, and the family's economic and cultural resources.

As a result of the analysis, students whose parents' socioeconomic status was higher tended to hope for a job with a higher socioeconomic status in the future.

The expected occupational status index gap between students in the top 25% and bottom 25% of their parents' socioeconomic status was 10.95 points in 2018 and 10.67 points in 2022.

The expected occupational status index quantifies the socioeconomic level of the student's desired occupation. A larger value indicates an occupation with a higher socioeconomic status.

This means that students whose parents have high socioeconomic status have a clear tendency to want jobs with high social status compared to students whose parents do not have high socioeconomic status, and this gap appeared at a similar level in both 2018 and 2022.

Students with parents of high socioeconomic status had a relatively high rate of wanting to pursue professional careers such as science, technology, engineering, and mathematics (STEM) or health and medicine.

Conversely, students whose parents had low socioeconomic status had a high rate of wanting non-professional occupations or not yet deciding on their desired occupation.

This difference also appeared when comparing students with similar academic achievements in reading, math, and science, and was confirmed for both male and female students.

This point suggests that even if grades are similar, the level of jobs students expect to have in the future may vary depending on their parents' socioeconomic conditions.

There was also a clear gap in opportunities to experience career education depending on the socioeconomic status of parents.

As a result of analyzing the career education experiences of 5,507 students using PISA 2018 data, researchers found that 63.1% of students in the top 25% of parents' socioeconomic status had experience searching the Internet for information about college curriculum, etc., but 40.8% of students in the bottom 25%. The gap reached 22.2 percentage points (p).

Students who had experience meeting with career counselors outside of school accounted for 43.1% of the upper group and 27.4% of the lower group, a difference of 15.7 percentage points.

The experience of visiting higher education institutions such as universities was 43.8% and 29.4%, respectively, and the experience of interviewing career counselors on campus was 70.5% and 58.8%.

The participation rate of students with high socioeconomic status was relatively high in job experience and interest and aptitude tests.

On the other hand, there was no significant difference in who was in charge of career guidance at school or whether career counselors were assigned depending on the socioeconomic status of the parents.

However, even if schools provide opportunities to receive career education, there is a gap in students' experience of actually receiving career counseling or seeking career information. It was analyzed that this gap is also related to differences in the jobs students desire.

In fact, when career education experience was added to the statistical analysis, the gap in expected job status according to parents' socioeconomic status was found to decrease by about 7%.

The researchers noted that even though career counselors are deployed in schools, there are gaps in students' actual experience depending on their home environment. It is difficult to bridge the gap in career aspirations simply by providing career education opportunities.

The researchers emphasized, "The core task of future school career education policies lies in making sure that students can actually use the information, counseling, and exploration opportunities they need, regardless of socioeconomic background, rather than expanding institutional supply itself."

At the same time, we proposed a plan to guarantee individual career counseling for at least 30 minutes at least once a year to middle school and high school students, and to provide career information, mentoring, and academic support to students whose parents have low socioeconomic status.