Last year, 560,000 students were enrolled at 339 universities, colleges and junior colleges in Korea. In 10 years, however, the total number of high school graduates will fall to 400,000 at most, forcing these schools to sharply reduce their enrollment, or in the case of less reputable ones, shut down altogether.
The education ministry's college restructuring plan unveiled Tuesday reflects this reality, intending to slash student quotas by 160,000 until 2023. But the hurriedly made plan has too many problems to be a blueprint that can effectively reform the nation's higher education.
First of all, the reduction target itself is too mechanical, when considering that not all high school graduates go to college. Given that about 80 percent of graduates entered colleges in 2013, the actual number of college students a decade later should be far smaller, meaning the target should be bigger.
Add to this a possible drop in the college-entrance rate, as seen by President Park Geun-hye's extolling of the corresponding rate of about 30 percent in Switzerland during her recent visit there, then one can't help suspect that a simplistic, shortsighted calculation has been made by education bureaucrats.
Equally careless and inept is the core point of the plan, which calls for schools to be divided into a five-tier ranking system, forcing those in the second to fifth categories to reduce their enrollment in connection with to their grades. Yet this system will not be able to eliminate the most problematic schools with both substandard faculties and students as early as possible, while driving out schools that are relatively better.
There are too many corrupt and worthless diploma mills unworthy to be called colleges in the nation today. What's needed to treat the cancer patient known as Korea's higher education system is not a diet but a surgical procedure.
The ministry says it would add a ''qualitative" assessment to the current ''quantitative" criteria in grading schools in consideration of province-based schools that cannot compete with those in Seoul metropolitan area. But who will make these subjective qualitative analyses? Anyone who served as a judge at a kindergartners' talent contest would know the difficulties in avoiding controversy about fairness and equity stemming from qualitative grading.
One can hardly expect the 400-strong committee of professors and businesspeople to which the ministry plans to assign the job to do so.
The government had better consider introducing an agency exclusively responsible for such assessments, filled with experts who enjoy a considerable level of public trust, such as the Council for Higher Education Accreditation (CHEA) in the United States.
We agree with the need to provide additional favors for provincial colleges in order to both seek balanced development among regions and prevent further concentration of everything good in the capital of Seoul and its adjacent provinces, but the ministry should seek different ways to do so from the present methods which will only end up letting bad money drive out good.
President Park should seriously consider setting up a high-powered panel responsible for overhauling the nation's college education system directly related with its long-term development.
That is too crucial a task to be left to education bureaucrats whose foremost concerns are often finding schools that can provide them with post-retirement positions.
The education ministry's college restructuring plan unveiled Tuesday reflects this reality, intending to slash student quotas by 160,000 until 2023. But the hurriedly made plan has too many problems to be a blueprint that can effectively reform the nation's higher education.
First of all, the reduction target itself is too mechanical, when considering that not all high school graduates go to college. Given that about 80 percent of graduates entered colleges in 2013, the actual number of college students a decade later should be far smaller, meaning the target should be bigger.
Add to this a possible drop in the college-entrance rate, as seen by President Park Geun-hye's extolling of the corresponding rate of about 30 percent in Switzerland during her recent visit there, then one can't help suspect that a simplistic, shortsighted calculation has been made by education bureaucrats.
Equally careless and inept is the core point of the plan, which calls for schools to be divided into a five-tier ranking system, forcing those in the second to fifth categories to reduce their enrollment in connection with to their grades. Yet this system will not be able to eliminate the most problematic schools with both substandard faculties and students as early as possible, while driving out schools that are relatively better.
There are too many corrupt and worthless diploma mills unworthy to be called colleges in the nation today. What's needed to treat the cancer patient known as Korea's higher education system is not a diet but a surgical procedure.
The ministry says it would add a ''qualitative" assessment to the current ''quantitative" criteria in grading schools in consideration of province-based schools that cannot compete with those in Seoul metropolitan area. But who will make these subjective qualitative analyses? Anyone who served as a judge at a kindergartners' talent contest would know the difficulties in avoiding controversy about fairness and equity stemming from qualitative grading.
One can hardly expect the 400-strong committee of professors and businesspeople to which the ministry plans to assign the job to do so.
The government had better consider introducing an agency exclusively responsible for such assessments, filled with experts who enjoy a considerable level of public trust, such as the Council for Higher Education Accreditation (CHEA) in the United States.
We agree with the need to provide additional favors for provincial colleges in order to both seek balanced development among regions and prevent further concentration of everything good in the capital of Seoul and its adjacent provinces, but the ministry should seek different ways to do so from the present methods which will only end up letting bad money drive out good.
President Park should seriously consider setting up a high-powered panel responsible for overhauling the nation's college education system directly related with its long-term development.
That is too crucial a task to be left to education bureaucrats whose foremost concerns are often finding schools that can provide them with post-retirement positions.
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