By Park Si-soo
Staff Reporter
The government's plan to promote thousands of full-time lecturers to assistant professor status from 2009 has received negative reaction from the lecturers themselves.
The Ministry of Education, Science and Technology announced a deregulation package including 45 new measures on Wednesday in a move to grant universities more autonomy in conducting various school affairs including lecturer employment.
The measures include the removal of the term ``full-time lecturer'' from the current four-step professor status ㅡ full-time lecturer, assistant professor, associate professor and tenured professor. The ministry said it was meant to boost the morale of roughly 6,000 full-time lecturers, who have played a major role in educating students, and to streamline the complicated status system.
The ministry will encourage school authorities to re-contract current full-time lecturers as assistant professors as the measures will take effect from next year.
``Most have treated full-time lecturers the same as part-time lecturers, although the two groups are under totally different working conditions and status on campus. So we expect the change to help raise the morale of full-time lecturers,'' an education official Lee Sang-bum told The Korea Times.
The most critical difference between the two groups is that full-time lecturers have the right to participate in the school board to determine school affairs, while part-time lecturers are excluded, the official said.
Lecturers belittled the measure, saying it would change nothing but the position inscribed on a plaque.
``It's meaningless,'' said Kim Young-gon, a member of the union for temporary lecturers. ``The new regulation doesn't help improve wage, working conditions or other welfare-related issues.''
Kim stressed that to improve Korean education and sharpen its competitive edge, the government needs to set the stage for treating part-time lecturers, roughly 70,000 around the country, the same as current full-time lecturers.
In the meantime, the package will enable universities with plural campuses to freely exchange students between them if the school meets the ministry's criteria on professors and facility.
Schools will be allowed to form an alliance to run joint degree courses and issue an academic credential recognized at allied schools except for courses for medical doctors, pharmacists, Oriental doctors, veterinarians and teachers.