Seoul National University (SNU) is opposing every policy produced by the Ministry of Education and Human Resources Development and it is starting to look like the two sides are in an arm-wrestling match. SNU president Jeong Un Chan continues to criticize university entrance policy and now professors there are rejecting the plan for a system of indirect voting for SNU president. Professors at the colleges of law and medicine are coming out and criticizing policy relating to the creation of specialized professional schools of law and medicine, namely “law schools” and “medical schools.”
While on the surface it looks like the government and SNU are in a full confrontation, it would not be right to simplify it as a conflict over there being either “autonomy” or “government intervention,” because school autonomy is a matter of how much autonomy, on an issue to issue basis. Given the influence SNU has on the whole of formal secondary education and considering the subsequent private tutoring craze, university entrance policy is not a question exclusively for SNU. It is social consensus, therefore, that must come before autonomy for SNU. It is problematic to have those leading the nation’s highest educational institution caring nothing for the issue of education as it concerns the whole country. The question of how many people should be admitted to its law school is of interest to many universities and persons in legal profession, not just to SNU. It is unnatural to think only of expression of opinion about the issue by SNU professors as being something special. And is not the establishment of “medical schools” closely related to the long-term production of medical professionals?
Indirect voting for SNU president is the biggest issue at hand, a proposal rejected by the school’s professors, and it is an issue that directly relates to autonomy. Historically Korean democracy has been connected to the struggle for direct elections. Looking at it from that perspective, SNU professors’ decision to maintain its system of direct voting for school president must be respected. When the government announced its plan to implement indirect elections it announced that if a majority of those voting wanted to maintain direct voting they would be allowed to, so that is not even something subject to debate. The only thing that must be remembered, however, is that the direction Korean democracy is taking seeks to entrust matters to the parties concerned but to make sure there are social checks in place, too. SNU professors know better than anyone else that with autonomy comes responsibility.
The Hankyoreh, 19 May 2005.
[Translations by Seoul Selection (PMS)]
[Editorial] SNU, the Value and Problems of Autonomy |
