With one of the highest per-capita expenditures on education in the world, South Korea offers a window on the challenges of learning in a neoliberal era of increasing global competition. No Alternative? investigates the rapidly growing field of education outside of daytime K-16 schooling in South Korea. Through ethnographic portraits of private after-schooling, alternative or second-chance schooling, home schooling, and adult distance education, the book reveals that education producers and consumers alike often reject or exit mainstream education while simultaneously seeking or embracing its symbolic value. "No Alternative sheds abundant light on the ways in which the South Korean educational system intricately intersects with intractable problems of class, social mobility, politics, and Korea's ongoing economic transformations. It will be beneficial both for those who have little knowledge of the situation of contemporary South Korean education, and for specialists who would gain from the latest research on this ever-changing but acutely problematic arena of contemporary South Korean society." Kelly H. Chong, University of Kansas. Nancy Abelmann is Harry E. Preble Professor and associate vice chancellor for research (humanities, arts, and related fields) at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign. Jung-Ah Choi is an adjunct faculty member at Fairleigh Dickinson University. So Jin Park is a research fellow at the institute for Social Development Studies at Yonsei University. --Book Jacket.