ExclusiveKorea to track English-taught university courses for 1st time

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The Ministry of Education will begin tracking the number of English-taught courses at universities this year, in line with a surge in international student enrollment.

The move marks the government’s first nationwide effort to collect such data, which until now had been left to individual universities.

An education ministry official told The Korea Times recently that the data will serve as a key reference for overseas students, as Korea attracts not only full-time degree seekers but a growing number of short-term exchange and visiting students from an expanding range of countries.

Once disclosed annually, the data could serve as a barometer of the government’s growing policy emphasis on English-taught instruction for universities nationwide.

Universities broadly agreed with the rationale, as Korea’s school-age population shrinks and institutions expand international student recruitment under the government’s regional university initiative. Increasing the number of English-taught courses is widely seen as a necessary step.

However, they also urged caution, saying the issue requires careful consideration.

The Ministry of Education building in Sejong / Korea Times file

“While expanding English-taught courses is a basic direction as universities focus on attracting international students, the formats of such courses vary widely, making it difficult to apply a uniform standard for public disclosure,” an official at a national university said on condition of anonymity.

An official at a private university in Seoul also said the number of English-taught courses had once surged across universities, but has leveled off or even declined at some institutions in recent years.

“It is difficult to speak on behalf of the university officially, but there is ongoing discussion in academia about whether simply increasing the number of English-taught courses is meaningful,” the official said.

The expansion of English-taught courses accelerated in the late 2000s, after the Korea Advanced Institute of Science and Technology announced in 2007 that it would switch all majors to English, amid growing emphasis on internationalization metrics and global university rankings.

However, as English-taught courses expanded, questions emerged over whether many Korean professors were sufficiently prepared to teach in English, fueling worries about potential declines in lecture quality.

“These days, international students often take Korean-language classes and rely on translation tools or artificial intelligence to follow the lectures,” the official added.

Lim Woo-young, an economics professor at Hong Kong University of Science and Technology, echoed the concern, warning that a rapid expansion of English-taught courses driven by internationalization pressures could lead to predictable drawbacks.

“Even professors who spent five to seven years earning a Ph.D. in English-speaking countries often find it challenging to prepare and deliver lectures in English without prior teaching experience,” he said.

“A systematic assessment of how many instructors can deliver English-taught courses at an acceptable quality level, compared with Korean-language lectures, should come before any policy signal to expand such offerings.”

With no official data requests issued so far, some universities are still discussing the matter internally.

While the ministry has confirmed it will collect the data, it has not yet decided whether the figures will be made public on the government’s official university information portal in August or released at a later time.

However, the ministry official noted that disclosing the number of English-taught courses is unlikely to pose major concerns, suggesting the data is likely to be made public.

The data will track English-taught courses only and will not include lectures offered in other foreign languages.