Education, once a great equalizer has been lost its power to decrease the gap between the haves and have-nots. The meaning college education holds in South Korea changed over time and educational field differentiated accordingly. Once a scarce resource became a popular method people utilize, now turned into a new minimum. Depending on how people relate to the social boundary created by the meaning of college education, Koreans can be grouped into three categories: beneficiaries, alienated and oppressed, and wasted and excluded. Those who benefit are the ones using college education as one of the resources they have at their disposal. It is a toolkit guiding them with their life strategies. Majority of Koreans are alienated and oppressed by the meaning of college education they consolidated. Excluded are the ones incapable of pursuing college education thus wasted to the other side of the boundary and lost theirplace of existence in the mainstream educational field.
