An Idealistic Vision and Loss of Policy Objectives: A Critical Analysis for the Development of the “Master Plan for the Promotion of Lifelong Education”

The Master Plan for the Promotion of Lifelong Education (MPLE) has been established every five years since 2002 based on the Lifelong Education Act. It is currently reaching its 5th basic plan. This study attempts to identify the structural problems of MPLE by analyzing the documents of the national master plan from a historical and integrated approach. Through re-analysis of interview data, FGI, and a literature review, it was confirmed that the two directions of human resource development and a learning society conflicted from the first planning period when establishing the master plan. As the process was repeated, the proposed policy tasks tended to be absorbed into other systems such as higher education or personalized-standards. At the structural level, the core problems identified include the absence of a concrete policy target group compared to the universal ideology of lifelong education, the lack of clear targets and performance indicators, and the compilation of budgets limited to the Ministry of Education in preparation for pan-ministerial projects. When designing a basic plan for the promotion of lifelong education in the future, it is necessary to establish a governance structure that can clearly present and evaluate goals and achievements for specific targets, and to redesign the lifelong education budget at the pan-ministerial level.