that South Korea will develop many great inventions, with no one to build them, and no one to service them. The same societies also perceive South Korea's obsession with individual educational attainment and the perceived prestige as an example of one of the many short-comings of the South Korean education system: logic and historical experience teach that such self and narrow minded focus leaves collective society to suffer. According to a 2012 research report from The McKinsey Global Institute the lifetime value of a college graduate's improved earnings no longer justifies the expense required to obtain the degree. Also highlighted in the report was the need for more vocational education to counteract the human cost of performance pressure and the high unemployment rate among the country's university-educated youth. The South Korean government, schools, and industry with assistance from the Swiss government and industry are now redesigning and modernizing the country's once strong vocational education sector with a network of vocational schools called "Meister Schools". The purpose of the Meister schools is to reduce the country's shortage of vocational occupations such as auto mechanics, plumbers, welders, boilermakers, electricians, carpenters, millwrights, machinists and machine operators as many of these positions go unfilled. Meister schools have been developed to revamp South Korea's vocational education system to be specifically designed to prepare youths to work in high-skilled trades and high-skilled manufacturing jobs and other fields. The schools are based on the German-style Meister schools, to teach youngsters to become masters of a skilled trade. Meister schools were set up to tackle the nations high youth unemployment rate as millions of young South Korean university graduates remain idle instead of taking up a trade while managers of small and medium businesses complain of skilled trade shortages. Many of Meister schools offer a wide range of skilled trades and technical disciplines that offer near guarantee of employment to graduates with an industry-supported curriculum design, and focus on developing skills required by various trades. The government of South Korea has taken initiatives to improve the perception of vocational training and combat the negative stigma attached to skilled manual labour and technical work. In addition, vocational streams have been integrated with academic streams to allow a seamless transition to university in order to allow further advancement if a young South Korean chooses to pursue a university degree. Meister schools offer apprenticeship-based training which takes place at vocational high