[Globalizing universitie] Cooperation leads to student opportunity
Published: 04 Sep. 2009, 02:49
Seo Jung-don. Photo by Lee Chan-won
A. The main gate of the Myeongnyun campus opens onto Daehangno, the historic center of Korea’s youth culture, and its rear gate onto Gwanghwamun and the Blue House, symbols of the country’s political and economic worlds. I think the location is more than desirable for the main campus’ focus on humanities and social science.
The Suwon campus, built in 1970, represents engineering, IT, the medical sciences and pharmacy, and it’s located in the so-called Silicon Valley of Seoul, facilitating cooperation with large enterprises such as Samsung Electronics and other smaller firms.
Now we are preparing to build the “Brain City” campus with the city of Pyeongtaek on 1,225 acres of land. Over the next three decades, we believe a university town capable of executing international academic-industrial collaboration projects will be necessary.
The campus will make up one-third of the site and be modeled after a British gothic university campus. We are currently waiting for approval of construction work from the government and in the past year we have signed memorandums of understanding for collaborative research with various universities, including the Georgia Institute of Technology, the University of Southern California and the University of Texas at Dallas. The project is expected to be finalized in four years at the latest.
To foster globally competitive students, the school needs competent faculty. How will Sungkyunkwan attract recognized professors?
We have secured and maintain competent scholars through our Global Core Faculty system. Through this we provide a variety of financial aid such as start-up funds and special research fees to newly selected faculty while offering incentives to those who show outstanding results in their regular evaluations.
We aim to raise our number of foreign professors to 10 percent of all faculty members by next year, with their academic expertise not merely limited to foreign languages.
Sungkyunkwan is known for its large number of Chinese undergraduates. What incentives are available for foreign students?
As of the first semester of this year, we had 1,208 foreign students total in both undergraduate and graduate courses. Notably, Chinese students account for 73 percent. We have seen an increasing number of students from other regions such as North America and Europe entering our undergraduate courses.
As incentives to those students, we earmark 35 percent of our scholarship money for students from overseas at the undergraduate level and 50 percent for graduate students. Foreign students of natural sciences at Sungkyunkwan partner universities who graduate in excellent academic standing there and choose our school for graduate courses will be exempted from tuition fees and receive a living stipend of up to 1 million won ($804) per month.
We are currently in the middle of designing programs to recruit more students from Latin America, Africa and Northern Europe step by step with extensive support from our foundation. The programs will be distinct from those at other universities, and I am sure we will establish ourselves as the preferred destination for foreign students in the next four years.
This year Sungkyunkwan converted its medical school from an undergraduate college to a graduate school that exempts students from the pre-med course requirements.How has that system been going?
Out of 40 total annual enrollments, half were allocated to medical school students, and they are now taking the same curriculum as those who entered the undergraduate course in 2007. I am aware that the Education Ministry is currently discussing whether or not to force all 41 universities with medical courses to adopt medical graduate schools and scrap undergraduate schools producing doctors starting next year.
[Of those 41, 15 have already complied with the anticipated regulations, while 12, including Sungkyunkwan, Seoul National, Korea and Yonsei, have undergone partial transformations. Fourteen schools mainly located in regions outside Seoul continue using the traditional system.]
While it may be too early to assess the effectiveness of the new medical school after only one semester, I can see a mixture of students with different backgrounds has created a competitive environment for studying. I also think it’s nice that students who have studied in various fields including the humanities and music now have a chance to become doctors through medical school.
But to be more realistic, I am worried about the considerable time spent studying and the ensuing financial costs. Given that it is mandatory for the majority of male students to spend three years in military service, they become doctors at age 35. Although we will have no choice but to follow the government, I hope it makes the right policy decisions after considering schools’ differing situations. I also hope the government raises the number of spots for annual admissions from the current 40 to 100, since the present quota is too small.
The university is operating unique degree programs in partnership with affiliates of Samsung, such as the department of mega buildings and bridges and the department of mobile systems engineering. What motivated the school to run these programs?
These collaborations embody the Confucian spirit of silsagusi, or pragmatism. They have been made possible by the university joining hands with industry leader Samsung. Such a full-scale collaboration is unprecedented in Korea to my knowledge. It’s a win-win strategy in that we produce the human resources that industry requires, and our students are guaranteed employment from the moment of enrollment within those departments. With the students from the semiconductor system engineering department graduating next February, some 500 of our graduates are expected to advance into high-tech industries annually.
By Seo Ji-eun [[email protected]]
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