Korea's top science university president will leave the school early next year, ending years of controversy over his allegedly rigid and high-handed school management.
The board of the Korea Advanced Institute of Science and Technology (KAIST), during a regular meeting Thursday, decided to respect the University President Suh Nam-pyo's decision to resign on Feb. 23, the board announced. His term ends in July 2014.
The meeting, however, rejected a plan to force the president's immediate resignation.
The timing of the resignation will be a month earlier than March of next year, as was previously mentioned by Suh during a news conference last Wednesday.
Since his appointment as the head of the prestigious school in 2006, Suh has made media headlines with his reformist programs that included a punitive tuition system that linked the amount of fees charged each student to their academic achievements.
He also initiated a competitive system that required professors to pass tougher tenure rules and deliver all lectures in English, which triggered strong opposition from both professors and students.
Such competition-based programs created pressure-packed classrooms, apparently prompting several students to commit suicide.
The board's decision, however, triggered an immediate protest from associations of professors at the university.
The groups demanded Suh's immediate resignation, saying chances are high that he would try to undo the decision misusing his power while in office.
"The board made a big mistake," Kang Seong-ho, who leads one of the associations, told reporters upon hearing the news. "It should have forced him to leave immediately." (Yonhap)