Top universities push online learning, raising questions about oversight

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Years after the coronavirus pandemic ended, a growing number of universities in Korea are bringing back online lectures, prompting critics to warn that the convenience of remote learning may come at the expense of educational quality.

Compounding the problem, weak academic oversight in online courses, along with fierce competition for grades in a challenging job market, has sparked a series of mass cheating scandals at universities across the country.

According to data from the Ministry of Education’s Higher Education in Korea website, Thursday, six major universities in Seoul — Seoul National University, Yonsei University, Korea University, Sogang University, Sungkyunkwan University and Hanyang University — offered a total of 534 online courses in the second semester of 2024.

Yonsei University had the most with 321, followed by Sungkyunkwan University with 56, Seoul National University with 51, Korea and Hanyang universities with 44 each and Sogang University with 18.

Online classes expanded rapidly in 2020 during the COVID-19 pandemic, but even after in-person teaching resumed in the second semester of 2022, several universities continued increasing their online offerings.

Seoul National University saw its number of remote classes rise from three to 51, Yonsei from 34 to 321 and Sogang from one to 18, indicating that online learning remains firmly embedded in university curricula.

Universities are increasingly expanding online courses to cut costs. Large virtual lectures allow many students to attend simultaneously without the need for physical classrooms.

For professors, online classes also offer convenience — once recorded, lectures can be reused in later semesters, and even exams are sometimes conducted remotely, reducing the burden of supervision and administration.

For students struggling with grade competition and job preparation, online classes can seem appealing. Attendance can often be replaced by simply watching lecture videos, while assignments and exams tend to be monitored less strictly.

In the past, the education ministry strictly limited online courses for traditional universities, except for cyber universities. But those restrictions have now been completely lifted.

Universities, seeing the financial benefits of online classes that expanded during the pandemic, have been reluctant to scale them back. At the same time, professors, facing less oversight and administrative work, are accused of allowing blind spots in academic management to persist.

This is also pointed out as a key factor that led recent mass cheating incidents at Yonsei and Korea universities, which occurred during large online courses that conducted their exams virtually.

However, critics warn that as online classes increase, the overall quality of education is bound to decline.

Park Joo-ho, a professor at Hanyang University’s Department of Education, pointed out that it is time to reflect on whether online classes truly contribute to the essence and purpose of education.

“When classes are conducted online or web-based, the human interaction that drives change and learning disappears,” he said. “No matter how advanced the online format becomes, it can never fully match the impact of in-person teaching.”

Park also noted that universities are increasingly turning to online education as a means to generate revenue amid growing financial pressure.

“Recently, not only in Korea but also at many U.S. state universities, online master’s programs are expanding rapidly. But from the fundamental perspective of education, in-person learning should take priority,” he said.