including its comparatively high test results and its major role in ushering South Korea's economic development while creating one of the world's most educated workforces. South Korea's highly enviable academic performance has gotten British education ministers actively remodeling their own curriculums and exams to try to emulate Korea's militant drive and passion for scholarly excellence and high educational achievement. Former U.S. President Barack Obama has also lauded the country's rigorous school system, where over 80 percent of South Korean high school graduates go on to enroll at a university. The nation's high university entrance rate has created a highly skilled workforce making South Korea among the most highly educated countries in the world with the one of the highest percentage of its citizens per capita holding a tertiary education degree. Large majorities of South Korean students go on to enroll in some form of tertiary education and leave higher education graduating with a tertiary qualification. In 2017, South Korea ranked fifth for the percentage of 25 to 64-year-olds that have attained tertiary education with 47.7 percent. 69.8 percent of South Koreans aged 25 to 34 years old have completed some form of tertiary education with 34.2 percent of South Koreans aged 25 to 64 having attained a bachelor's degree which is one of the highest among OECD countries. The system's rigid and hierarchical structure has been criticized for stifling creativity and innovation; described as intensely and "brutally" competitive, The system is often blamed for the high suicide rate in South Korea, particularly the growing rates among those aged 10–19. Various media outlets attribute the nation's high suicide rate on the nationwide anxiety around the country's college entrance exams, which determine the trajectory of students' entire lives and careers, though teenage suicide rates (ages 15–19) still remain below those of the United States and Canada. Former South Korean hagwon teacher Se-Woong Koo wrote that the South Korean education system amounts to child abuse and that it should be "reformed and restructured without delay". The system has also been criticized for producing a glut of university graduates competing for a limited number of open job placements, thereby creating an overeducated and underemployed labor force; where in the first quarter of 2013 alone, nearly 3.3 million South Korean university graduates were jobless, leading many graduates overqualified for lower-ranked jobs that are less prestigious and require lower levels of education. Further criticism has been