By Yun Suh-young
Korean universities are unable to attract foreign professors and overseas students despite ongoing efforts to globalize the schools, foreign and Korean educators say.
At the Korea-Australia Higher Education Conference on Monday at the Plaza Hotel in Seoul, professors and researchers from Korea and Australia discussed ways to enhance the globalization of Korean universities and to promote educational exchanges between the two countries.
“Although the overall number of students studying outside their countries has increased consistently over the past ten years, the number of foreign students who come to South Korea out of those students that still remain is 1.4 percent,” said Kim Tae-wan, president of the Korean Educational Development Institute (KEDI).
“If we want to globalize Korea’s higher education, we need to open up our educational market and build a global mindset at the same time.”
The conference was hosted by the Ministry of Education, Science and Technology in Korea and the Department of Education, Employment and Workplace Relations of the Australian government. The conference this year is timely since 2011 marks the 50th year of friendship between Korea and Australia.
Despite the increase in the number of foreign students in Korean universities, the globalization status of universities here remains stagnant, according to the professors.
The number of foreign students in Korea increased 3.7 times in 2011 since 2005 to 83,842 students from 22,526.
However, the countries from which these students come from lack diversity.
Over 86 percent of the overseas students are from Asia and 69 percent of those are from China.
“Korea’s attraction of foreign students is lopsided. Only students from certain countries come to Korea to study. We need to diversify the pool of foreign students in order to globalize Korean education,” said Seo Young-in, a research fellow at KEDI.
“This is why we need to share information with Australia which has a long history of experience with international education.”
In the Global Competitiveness Report for 2010-2011 submitted at the World Economic Forum, Australia ranked 16th in national competitiveness and 12th in quality of higher education whereas Korea ranked 22nd and 57th respectively.
The problems with Korean universities’ way of attracting foreign students are attributed to poor strategy and lack of promotion, inappropriate methods of attraction, and an inadequate screening process, according to Kim.
Also, the management of foreign students is also done very poorly.
“Even when foreign students come to Korea, schools fail to supervise them properly. There also isn’t much accommodation for them,” said the KEDI president.
“Foreign students often face difficulties due to the lack of English courses and the low understanding and acceptance of foreign cultures.”
As for foreign professors, they avoid coming to the country because the recruiting process is very complicated, vague and intimidating.
“The appointment conditions are unclear, misleading or inflexible,” said Damien Mugavin, professor of landscape architecture at Seoul National University.
“When I first heard of the opening at SNU, there was no advertised call for applications. It was just listed on the website. There was no clear statement of appointment conditions including salary, no ancillary benefits mentioned, so I didn’t apply. But when I did the next time, they told me I should arrive within seven days after telling me I was appointed.”
The professor added that it was difficult to establish a research laboratory unless one had a ‘Korean network’ and the research fund for foreigners was very small at the university.
The problem in the process of recruiting foreign professors was that schools “simply tried to attract foreign teachers just to fulfill their globalization index” and this led to “recruiting professors without going through proper qualification evaluation procedures” according to Kim.
When these problems are addressed and corrected, Korea could attract more foreign students and professors as well as improve its globalization status in the world, participants at the conference said.