Non-viable colleges face shutdowns

By Park Si-soo

The government will launch a committee with a mandate to assess universities and make a live-or-die judgment on ill-managed ones in July.

The committee will force low-ranked universities in management to present restructuring plans and, based on them, will discuss with the education ministry about how to deal with them. The government is also considering making public a list of schools on the brink of closure for financial reasons.

“The committee will be launched in early July to play a key role in restructuring universities,” said Lee Ju-ho, minister of education, science and technologies, Tuesday. “We will work with those versed in school accounting and finance from finance ministry and private sectors.”

This aggressive push to shut financially-troubled schools comes at a time when a string of protests against what people call “deadly high” tuition are unfolding nationwide.

Korea’s annual tuition ranked second highest at 7.69 million won ($7,000), after the United States in the 2009 report by the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD).

President Lee Myung-bak has expressed grave concern about the issue, ordering the Cabinet to come up with measures to cut tuition fees.

One of the solutions from the political circle is subsidizing universities with taxes. Last week, the government and the ruling Grand National Party said they will provide 8.3 trillion won to universities over the next three years so that students would pay 30 percent less by 2014.

Critics say the elimination of uncompetitive, poorly-run schools should come first in order to prevent a waste of taxpayers’ money, an allegation supported by many news outlets and politicians.

Experts say if the suggestion is adopted, Sunghwa College could be affected first.

The college in Gangjin, a rural county in South Jeolla Province, is now under intense scrutiny from auditors of the education ministry for alleged illegal accounting practices and misuses of school funds.

The inspection was launched last week following a news report that its 120 faculty members and staffers received only 136,000 won ($126) in salary this month, indicating that the school is on the brink of bankruptcy.

This is not the first state inspection targeting Sunghwa.

In a regular audit in 2006 and again last year, the education ministry found 19 violations of the law, consequently punishing some 100 people and confiscating 3.6 billion won from its funds in a punitive measure. The ministry then demanded the school improve its management system, but nothing has changed, it said. Sunghwa founder Lee Haeg-ki, 57, was convicted of taking bribes from professor hopefuls last year.

“We will firmly respond to any additional wrongdoings at the college,” the ministry said in a statement. “In the worst case, it could be shut down.”

The 62nd clause of the law governing higher education institutions says the education ministry is entitled to give an order to shut down a college confirmed to have violated the law “several times.”

Lee Dae-young, a spokesman for education ministry, said, “The closure of Sunghwa will be decided after we review inspection reports.”

A Sunghwa professor said in an interview, “Even though I will lose my job, this school should be ostracized to prevent more students from being affected.”