By Na Jeong-ju
Education Minister Lee Ju-ho approved the closure of two small private universities Monday, citing alleged poor management and misappropriation of school funds by their owners.
The closing of the poorly-run colleges reflects the government’s commitment to accelerate its education restructuring drive. But at the same time it is drawing fierce protests from universities.
The education ministry said more unethical schools will face the ax in the coming months if they fail to restructure themselves.
Myungshin University and Sunghwa College, both located in South Jeolla Province, were among the schools that had been labeled as “marginal” due to opaque management, administrative fraud and poor student services.
The ministry said it had given the two schools an opportunity to change, but they refused to do so.
“We decided to close them to protect students and ensure their rights to study in good schools,” Lee told reporters. “We are determined to deal sternly with similar cases.”
The ministry said it will issue the official shutdown orders to the two schools in mid-December, banning them from admitting new students. The government will arrange for the transfer of 3,000 students who are currently attending the two to other schools in the region, ministry officials said.
This is the third case of disciplining private schools by the government. It closed Gwangju University for the Arts in 2000 and Asia University in 2008 due to mismanagement and fraud cases involving their owners.
The closing of Myungshin and Sunghwa bodes ill for schools that have been blacklisted as substandard by the ministry. In early September, it named 43 private and state-run schools that won’t get state subsidies and face administrative restrictions next year.
The worst-rated schools were Luther University in Yongin, Gyeonggi Province; Kundong University in Andong, North Gyeongsang Province; and Holy People University in Cheonan, South Chungcheong Province.
“The substandard schools will have to carry out rigorous restructuring to survive. Some of them will have to seek mergers with other schools or shut down voluntarily,” said Kim Eung-kwon, a ministry official.
Minister Lee has vowed to step up college restructuring in order to enhance the competitiveness of local schools, saying student enrollments at colleges will decrease by 40 percent in 12 years from current levels.
The college restructuring plan is tied to the ministry’s tuition cut drive. Last week, the Board of Audit and Inspection revealed that universities had inflated spending estimates when they draw up yearly budget plans in order to collect more tuition from students, calling for drastic measures to lower fees.
According to Kim, the ministry official, the government has submitted a bill to the National Assembly to speed up the closure of unqualified schools.
“Under the current law, it takes too long to close bad schools and punish bad managers. The legislation will enable us to do the job more quickly,” he said.
The ministry’s move to weed out unqualified schools has drawn criticism from some professors’ groups and the schools, which have claimed the methods the ministry adopted to evaluate schools were biased and unfair.
Officials from Myungshin and Sunghwa say they will file administrative suits to nullify the forced closures.
“The government’s decision to close our school is unfair. We will file an injunction and administrative suit to nullify it,” said an official from Myungshin, a family-owned four-year school.
The official said the school has carried out most of the restructuring measures requested by the government.
jj@koreatimes.co.kr