By Kim Jae-heun
University students are venting concerns and frustration at the government and schools over their lax preparation for the implementation of the revised Higher Education Act that took effect, Friday.
According to the new law, universities have to guarantee three years of employment for adjunct professors as part of the Ministry of Education's plan to strengthen their job security.
However, the plan has seen little progress as it puts financial pressure on schools, which have consequently delayed hiring part-time lecturers and making a new syllabus available for students.
A network of university student councils from across the country posted a statement Wednesday on social media that denounced the education ministry and the schools for shunning their responsibilities.
The statement said many of the universities failed to confirm the syllabus for second semester courses prior to the class registration period for students that was scheduled for the end of July, because of the revised act.
“The ministry admitted their late distribution of the new manual for hiring part-time lecturers has resulted in the chaos, while schools are saying they do not have a big enough budget to employ the number of lecturers they need. No one is taking responsibility over the situation and students are taking all the consequences,” read the network's statement.
At Seoul National University (SNU), 766 courses out of 2,661 that are posted online, are missing a course description, according to the student body council as of July 29, two days before the registration period for classes opened yesterday. On the College of Education website, 63 percent of the courses uploaded to the site prior to the registration period did not have any syllabus description.
The SNU's student body council named the revised Higher Education Act as the main cause.
The situation at other universities was not so different.
At Hankuk University of Foreign School, the university announced it will not allocate the lecturers and the syllabuses for 959 courses until class registration in August, the school's student council said.
According to the student body, all the lecturers will be hired before the course registration in the first open recruitment but the second open recruitment deadline has been postponed to the end of August.
Korea University's student council also said the number of courses for the second semester, this year, has decreased compared to last year. It also confirmed the school has failed to allocate lecturers for many of the courses.
The education ministry's recent survey, too, confirmed 68 percent of universities have not completed hiring all their lecturers yet. Only 106 out of 328 said they were ready to start the second semester.
“This is first time the local universities are hiring lecturers through an open recruitment system which is delaying the process,” a ministry official said.
Meanwhile, the education ministry has proposed revising the bill to guarantee job security to part-time lecturers. The revised Higher Education Act enforces schools to hire adjunct professors as faculty members and pay them a stable salary.