New ways to judge universities on the cards
The Ministry of Education will announce the outline of a new college restructuring plan at the end of this month in an effort to factor in more qualitative assessments, such as students’ opinions of courses, the JoongAng Ilbo reported.Previously, the ministry evaluated colleges on quantitative data, including their graduates’ employment rate and financial stability.
Under the new plan, authorities will divide evaluations into five levels and impose enrollment quotas based on the results. Except for schools with the highest evaluations, other colleges will have to reduce the number of students.
The ministry is considering 60 to 70 indicators of the quality of education offered at schools.
“We expect the results of the new assessments to be factored into 30 to 40 percent of the college assessment process,” an official of the Education Ministry said.
The shift reflects Education Minster Seo Nam-soo’s emphasis on new ways of improving schools.
“If we only focus on numerical data, universities will find ways to improve those ratings,” Seo said. “They can find tricks or sneaky ways to boost their scores.
“Such measurements are not able to truly show the kind of courses schools offer to students and they actually distort reality. The Education Ministry will enforce enrollment cuts if a college fails to provide decent education,” the minister said.
When imposing enrollment cuts, the ministry will try to maintain the current ratio of student enrollments in universities in Seoul and neighboring Gyeonggi and schools outside of the metropolitan area.
Presently, the number of undergraduates who attend Seoul and Gyeonggi universities accounts for 37 percent, while the remaining 63 percent of students go to universities in provincial regions.
“When we decide how much colleges should reduce the number of students, we will not radically deviate from the current student ratio,” said an official of the ministry.
“It will be within a range of plus or minus 5 percent from the current proportions,” the official said.
Faculty from colleges outside of the capital city complained last November that their schools need some measures that can “level the playing field” when compared with schools in Seoul and its neighboring region.
More and more universities in regional cities have had trouble attracting new students, who prefer being in Seoul.
Students and parents believe that universities in Seoul offer more opportunities of landing a job at large companies. Almost a quarter of Korea’s population lives in Seoul and the nearby metropolitan area, with many big conglomerates headquartered in the capital region. The plan to maintain the ratio appears to be intended to ease concerns that stricter government policies will push schools outside of Seoul to the edge.
The ministry also plans to diversify assessments depending on which areas a college specializes in.
“Colleges have different focuses,” said an official of the ministry. “We’ve taken a somewhat one-size-fits-all approach so far. But now we’d like to consider which field a college tries to concentrate on and assess its performance in that area of specialization.”
BY CHEON IN-SEONG [ejpark@joongang.co.kr]
with the Korea JoongAng Daily
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