CONFERENCE Korean universities need stronger international reach to compete globally: experts

Over the past decade, Korean universities have made notable strides in their standing with employers, as their ability to produce a talented workforce better aligns with the actual needs of the labor market, while also establishing a strong track record in translating academic research into commercial applications.

Yet they have yet to match their Asian peers in one area that is increasingly important to global competitiveness: practical internationalization.

That shortfall is becoming harder to overlook as universities are called upon to help solve to problems that transcend national borders, from artificial intelligence (AI) to climate change, experts from two leading higher-education analytics firms said Tuesday.

The remarks came during a panel discussion titled “Enhancing Global Competitiveness of Korean Universities in the AI Era,” the closing session of this year’s Korea Times Global Conference.

Leigh Kamolins, vice president of evaluation and insights at Quacquarelli Symonds (QS), first pointed to the evolution in both the quality of Korea’s academic workforce and the value it delivers to the domestic labor market.

“There’s this emerging connection between the ability of Korean universities to provide the skills that matter to the workforce within the country. This is something that was a very different picture 10 years ago,” he said.

Ashley Mok, Asia-Pacific vice president of consultancy at Times Higher Education (THE), highlighted a parallel strength in the relationship between university research and industry.

THE tracks patents that cite university research, and Korean institutions perform particularly strongly on that measure, a reflection of the country’s growth in research commercialization and industry links, Mok said. At the leading universities, those links are reinforced by close research partnerships with industrial heavyweights such as Samsung Electronics, SK hynix and Hyundai Motor.

However, the picture is less encouraging when it comes to internationalization in practice.

Leading institutions elsewhere in Asia like Singapore and Hong Kong have been more deliberate about bringing international faculty onto their campuses and building cross-border research collaborations that produce results beyond individual projects, Mok said.

“For Korea, I believe it’s one of the most examined in terms of the English language. But there is quite a gap in terms of English curriculum offerings in top Korean universities and across the board.”

Kamolins pointed to another consequential deficit: the standing Korean universities receive from academics abroad. Their contributions may be well recognized within home, but many institutions have yet to build the same visibility among their international peers.

“Are they perceived as making a really strong impact for society? There is still some work to be done for many Korean universities in telling that story outside of Korea.”

The stakes extend beyond rankings. As universities confront problems that cut across borders, a stronger international presence could open opportunities for Korean institutions to share their research and expertise more widely. “There is a lost opportunity here if we don’t make the rest of the world aware of what is on offer here in Korea,” Kamolins said.

The spread of AI across academia is also likely to complicate how universities measure their progress, Mok said, as the technology makes it possible to produce far more research and other academic output than before.

For universities, that makes it all the more important to define what distinguishes them, rather than simply measuring themselves against the same set of benchmarks.

“It’s about understanding what the impact is that your university is making at your own specialty level,” he explained.

Kamolins similarly urged institutions to look beyond easily measured outputs and consider whether they are equipping students with skills that will remain valuable as the nature of work changes.

“It’s about whether the universities are producing resilient skills around problem solving and thinking that are going to be needed to navigate this world where none of us know what it’s going to look like in 10 years’ time,” he said.

But Mok cautioned against turning AI itself into another standardized yardstick for comparing universities.

“Then it becomes an arms race,” he said. “AI has to be for the common good of humanity, rather than just another benchmarking exercise for us.”

Rather than a simple comparison of who is using more of the technology, the more useful question is where each institution stands today and how it can deploy its resources most effectively from there, he said.