Inequality between universities located in Seoul Metropolitan area and those in local area
must be dealt with in sociology of education. Particularly, inequality in terms of education
process and results after entering college entrance should be analyzed in sociology of education
considering its theoretical and practical importance. In this research, the difference of core
competence between students in colleges located in Seoul Metropolitan area and those of
colleges located in local areas by utilizing the data drawn from Korean Collegiate Essential
Skills Assessment(K-CESA). Core competence, as basic competence to be educated during
college education has been regarded very important along with the transition to the
knowledge-based society and the universalization of higher education. K-CESA is composed of
6 competences, self-management, interpersonal competency, global competency, communication
competency, resources-information-technology utilization competency, and high-ordered thinking
competency. The analysis on the data of about 30,000 students' core competency level showed
the clear gap between two groups across 6 competencies. The gap in non-cognitive competency
such as interpersonal or self-management is smaller than in cognitive competency. The result of
the lower level of students in local area in general and freshmen in particular confirmed the
gap between the quality of students input depending on the location of the college and
university. Another important finding is that the gap decreased in accordance with education
year. That is the difference between two groups is much smaller in senior students rather than
freshman students. This result may imply the possibility that the local higher education
institutions has contributed to improving core competences of students better through their
educational process than their counterparts in Seoul Metropolitan. However, because of the limit
of the data such as cross-sectional data collecting from the limited sample, it should be
interpreted with a specific care for a causal relation and generalizability. This research may
contribute to increase of the interest of researchers in the area of sociology of education on
inequality and educational process in higher education.