A Study on the Level of Recognition and Use of Standards Among College Students

As global competition intensifies, the pace of technological innovation rapidly accelerates, and demand for new markets increases, standards are emerging as a key tool not only in the national economy and industry, but also in corporate management. Particularly, as the 4th Industrial Revolution, where convergence is a keyword, becomes a hot topic, the importance of standards is being further emphasized. Standards are work for companies, countries, and local communities based on the integrated results of science, technology, and experience. Since the end users of standards are general consumers, general consumers' awareness of the standards is important. Recognizing the importance of standards, the world's major advanced countries have been working to cultivate manpower to respond, and the government of the Republic of Korea also recognized the importance of the role of standards in the national economy and has been working to foster standards experts. Especially, it has been revealed that the university standardization course, which began in 2004 with the purpose of cultivating standard manpower required by the industry, has contributed greatly to improving college students' awareness of standards. Accordingly, in this study, Survey on students at a university in Seoul where standardization courses are being offered was done regarding their awareness of standards and their importance, and their level of standards knowledge. According to the analysis results, college students' awareness of standards and their importance, and the level of standards knowledge appear to be somewhat high. In particular, standard knowledge was shown to be very high with an average score of 8.7 points, and these results showed that the difference was significant depending on whether or not students took standards class. That is, it can be judged that the standards class had a positive effect on these results. However, compared to the awareness of standards and their importance and the level of standards knowledge, the degree of use of standards was found to be somewhat low. Therefore, it is necessary to add contents and activities for utilizing standards in future standards class.