ContributionKorea's universities face test of relevance

For years, debate about the future of Korean higher education has been dominated by demography. The concern is justified. The number of Koreans of university-entrance age is projected to fall from 460,000 in 2020 to about 280,000 by 2040, a decline of almost 40 percent, according to the Korean Council for University Education. Regional universities, many of them dependent on tuition income, are already confronting the consequences.

But demography alone will not decide which universities survive. It will expose which institutions can still persuade students, employers, governments and communities that they provide value worth sustaining. Korea’s unavoidable demographic contraction is therefore also a test of relevance.

That distinction matters. A university cannot reverse the country’s birth rate. It can decide whether its graduates acquire useful capabilities, whether its research addresses problems in which Korea can make a distinctive contribution and whether it creates demonstrable value for the region around it. These should be the three tests of relevance.

The choices may be uncomfortable. Some universities will need to specialise around genuine regional strengths. Others will have to merge, consolidate or share provision while a few may need to close. Korea’s Regional Innovation System and Education initiative and its Glocal University programme, which support selected regional universities as anchors of local development, are early attempts to shape this process rather than leave it to attrition.

The first test is what universities enable their graduates to do. Selectivity, research output and reputation remain important, but they are not substitutes for educational purpose. Artificial intelligence is changing jobs and the organisation of work. Graduates are likely to move through several careers, some of which do not yet exist. Subject knowledge remains essential, but it must be accompanied by the ability to keep learning, think critically, communicate, collaborate and apply knowledge in unfamiliar circumstances.

Korean employers have already signalled this demand. In the QS Global Employer Survey, communication, teamwork and problem-solving were the three capabilities they rated most highly. Problem-solving scored 91.5 among Korean employers, compared with an East Asian average of 89.7, the widest of the three gaps. Such skills cannot remain optional additions delivered chiefly by careers services. They must influence curricula, assessment and wider student experience.

Internationalisation should serve the same educational purpose. Korea has made impressive progress as a destination, with international student numbers rising from about 102,000 in 2016 to roughly 239,000 by March 2026, according to Korea Immigration Service data. On QS’ international-student-ratio measure, its leading universities now rank ahead of their counterparts in mainland China, Japan and Taiwan and have been closing the gap year on year, though they remain well behind Hong Kong. Yet a shrinking domestic population could tempt institutions to treat overseas recruitment chiefly as a way to fill empty places. That would be a strategic mistake.

Recruiting international students is not the same as building an international university. Korea has been markedly more successful at attracting international students than international faculty, where its leading universities rank far lower, a sign that recruitment has so far outpaced the deeper work of building genuinely international academic communities. Global talent will contribute fully only where students and academics can belong, exchange ideas and influence teaching, research and campus life. Cultural diversity is not merely an enrollment strategy. Properly embedded, it is part of the infrastructure through which graduates learn to question assumptions and work across borders.

The second test is whether Korea converts research intensity into a distinctive impact. The country has formidable foundations: a highly qualified research workforce, strong research outcomes and the highest R&D intensity in the OECD. In 2023 it invested 4.9 percent of GDP in research and development, compared with 2.6 percent in China. But intensity does not guarantee influence. China’s far greater absolute scale means that Korean universities cannot compete simply by doing more of everything.

They will need to make hard choices about where they can lead. Ageing, semiconductors, artificial intelligence, climate technology, public health and other fields that cross disciplinary boundaries offer opportunities, but priorities should reflect genuine institutional capability rather than fashionable labels. Fundamental research must remain protected. The challenge is to connect it more deliberately with the economic and social problems Korea is particularly well placed to solve.

The third test is regional value. Korea’s most prestigious universities and much of its economic opportunities are concentrated in Seoul. Around 44 percent of the country’s top universities are located in the capital, a concentration found nowhere else in the world. Demographic decline will sharpen competition everywhere, but its effects will be unequal. For leading institutions in the capital, it may mean a smaller and more contested recruitment pool. For tuition-dependent regional universities, it threatens the economic and civic infrastructure of the communities they serve.

Regional policy should ask more than how many institutions can be preserved. It should ask what each university is for. An institution might earn its future by developing talent for a local industry, providing research capacity that smaller firms could not build alone, supporting public services or becoming a magnet for international students and academics. The answer will differ by region.

Public funding should support credible, differentiated missions and measurable public value, rather than preserving existing structures irrespective of their outcomes. Equally, reform must give successful regional institutions sufficient autonomy and funding stability to pursue distinctive long-term missions, rather than making their progress overly dependent on successive competitive funding programmes.

Korea’s predicament offers a warning to university systems elsewhere. Higher education’s social contract is no longer renewed automatically through rising participation and the assumed value of a degree. Students want evidence that education will prepare them for uncertain working lives. Governments expect research and innovation to produce public benefit. Regions need institutions capable of supporting their economic and social resilience. Demographic decline will determine how many students Korean universities recruit. Relevance will determine which institutions thrive.

Leigh Kamolins is vice president of Evaluation and Insights at global higher education analytics firm Quacquarelli Symonds.