The basic outline of the structural reorganization of the country's universities actively being pursued by the Ministry of Education and Human Resources Development has taken form. Ten national universities are to be combined into five, and 17 national and top private universities are supposed to reduce their quotas by an average of 10 percent.
The reduced number of national universities is well below the education ministry's goal of 15. Early in the year the ministry sounded confident about reducing the country's 50 national universities to 15 without difficulty, but in the end it will be unable to keep that pledge. You cannot judge everything by numbers alone but this clearly does not meet expectations. Furthermore, resistance from professors and students in the course of discussing integration, and reportedly some of the schools that have submitted integration plans have still not resolved their internal controversy. There is still controversy about reducing entrance quotas, too, because only the overall plans about quota reductions have been released and the details, what the quota will be for each major, have yet to be determined.
For that reason the work of structural reorganization of the country's universities now becomes more difficult and important. It will be critical for operations to be actually different than before, even though the plan now has the appearances of integration. The reduction of department entrance quotas, too, must be approached rationally by examining changes in academic trends and what kind of expertise society is demanding. It would be a problem if factors that have nothing to do with the essence of the issue, such as competing power interests within individual schools, play a role.
Making sure things go right will require that the ministry is not overly obsessed with keeping the timetable for integration and closures, and that it deeply examines and analyzes the legitimacy of each school's goal for specialization. Listening to professors, students, and other members of each school's community and winning their approval must not be neglected, because it will be hard for reorganization to succeed if people at each school do not share the same understanding. Most importantly, the ministry and people at each school must not forget that the ultimate goal of this effort is improving the quality of university education.
The Hankyoreh, 5 July 2005.
[Translations by Seoul Selection (PMS)]
[Editorial] University Reorganization is About Better Education |
