By Kang Shin-who
Staff Reporter
Universities tentatively selected by the government as eligible to run law schools are moving to raise tuition fees sharply.
They said they need to raise tuition as they have been allocated with student quotas that fall far short of their expectations.
Some universities that received preliminary licenses for law schools filed petitions to the Ministry of Education and Human Resources Development to raise tuition, officials from the schools said.
In response, the ministry told the schools that they can in principle decide on tuition.
Korea University and Hanyang University had originally set the highest tuition at 18 million won ($19,000) among the law schools. Yonsei University planned to charge 17 million won. Hankuk University of Foreign Studies (HUFS) and Kyung Hee University and Konkuk University set at 16 million won each.
``Although we didn’t start to discuss the tuition hike yet, some universities say that they cannot run law schools without raising tuition due to the small student quota allowed by the government,’’ said Chang Jae-ok, dean of the College of Law at Chung-Ang University in Seoul.
Some other professors mentioned the need for supporting funds from the government. ``The government is subsidizing the Judicial Research Training Institute (which is training those who passed the Korean Bar Examination before entering the legal profession) with more than 10 billion won. As such, it should grant a certain amount of money to law schools,’’ said Prof. Lee Sang-jung from Kyung Hee University.