By Kang Shin-who
Staff Reporter
The government’s project to nurture universities into internationally competitive schools has been four times oversubscribed, the education ministry said Tuesday.
Under the World Class University (WCU) project, the Ministry of Education, Science and Technology will select projects submitted by universities and provide the necessary funding. It said a total of 66 universities applied for the state-run project, with 477 research plans costing a total of 483 billion won ($450 million).
The ministry plans to allocate a total of 165 billion won to selected research projects every year over the next five years. With the funds, the selected universities will establish new departments and recruit internationally-renowned scholars. The total fund earmarked for the five-year project stands at 825 billion won.
``The project aims to foster world-class universities by hiring renowned scholars. At least five Korean universities will be among top 200 global universities through the project,’’ ministry official Park Joo-ho said.
Among the proposals from the universities, 94 concern integrating or creating departments, while 383 involve employing world-renowned foreign scholars. Seoul National University has proposed the largest number of projects at 51, followed by Yonsei with 36, Korea University with 26 and Kyung Hee University, 24.
The proposals include research plans with 11 Nobel Prize winners and a number of professors from universities such as Harvard, Oxford, Yale and Columbia.
The ministry will review all the proposals with domestic and overseas professors from next month and announce the successful applicants by the end of November.