By Kang Shin-who
Staff Reporter
A private council overseeing admission and other key university policies cleared Korea University (KU) of allegations that it favored specialized elite schools over public schools in picking students. However, it failed to eliminate lingering public suspicions and protests from parents and progressive teachers' groups.
The Korean Council for University Education (KCUE), the policy-setting body comprised of presidents of universities, concluded that KU has not ranked schools, and its alleged actions did not influence the process of selecting students.
The school has been accused of having given special points to applicants from elite high schools specialized in foreign languages. Students from the foreign language high schools formed the largest group of successful applicants by a large margin.
In Korea, universities are still regulated in picking students and restricted from ranking high schools in the process.
KCUE President Sohn Byung-doo, also head of Sogang University, said the reason behind the ranking of high schools by the government was to select students based on individual ability alone.
``We've concluded that KU didn't uniformly discriminate against students by high school,'' he said. ``The admission data KU submitted to us countered the favoritism claims by the media. We found top students from elite schools who were not accepted and `ordinary' students with low academic grades gaining university admission,'' Sohn added.
KU also said the allegations were ``groundless.'' Seo Tae-yeol, a university official, told reporters that its internal inspection team found ``neither mistakes nor wrongdoing'' in the process of picking students.
He said 57.5 percent of students from foreign language schools were admitted, while 52.4 percent of ordinary school applicants were, showing no favoritism.
In response, parents' groups alleged that the council is not qualified to supervise university admission and urged the education ministry to take watchdog authority back from it.
``The council's decision on KU's unfair admission showed how irresponsible and incapable the organization is. We cannot trust the KCUE any more. The education ministry should investigate the case and resolve every suspicion over the issue,'' said Parents Solidarity for Human Education in a statement.
The Korean Teachers & Education Worker's Union (KTU), a progressive teachers' group, also called for the dismantling of the council. ``From the beginning, we didn't expect the council to offer authentic fact-finding and we knew that it would support the KU, dubbed a `powerful university' of the Lee Myung-bak administration,'' it said in a statement.