Universities can lift Korea’s pitifully low birthrate
Published: 18 Aug. 2024, 20:14
Lee Kwang-hyung
The author is president of KAIST and head of the fourth industrial revolution committee of the JoongAng Ilbo’s Reset Korea Campaign.
Korea’s birthrate shows a dramatic decline. The total fertility rate (TFR) was 0.72, or 230,000 newborns, last year. As the TFR only applies to women, the rate can be halved to 0.36 when you take men into account.
As most Korean women give birth to their first child at 30, the 230,000 babies born in 2023 will have their babies around 2054. If the current TFR at 0.36 is maintained, approximately 82,800 babies (230,000 x 0.36) will be born in 2054. If the 82,800 newborns that year have babies in 2084, only 29,800 babies will be born in Korea. The country’s proud 5,000-year history may come to an end in just 60 years.
South Korea already produces fewer babies than North Korea, whose population is only half of South Korea’s. As about 300,000 babies are born in the North annually, it will have more youths than South Korea after 30 years. By then, the South will become a country dominated by older citizens. If the situation is left unattended, South Korea will lose its comparative strength in population, adding a novel factor to its decades-long standoff with the country across the border.
Low fertility rates are actually a universal phenomenon across developed economies. France, a country which agonized over its low birthrate for a long time, is known to have successfully turned the tide among advanced countries. Even France’s TFR fell sharply last year, yet it is still 1.68, more than double Korea’s.
Japan could keep its TFR at 1.20 last year, mostly thanks to the government’s methodical effort to maintain its population of 100 million by establishing the office of a special minister in charge of the mission under former Prime Minister Shinzo Abe. Current Prime Minister Fumio Kishida also strives to lift the fertility rate by launching the Children and Families Agency as an external organ of the Cabinet in 2023.
In Korea, the Presidential Committee on Ageing Society and Population Policy has been working to solve the population conundrum. President Yoon Suk Yeol decided to install the Department of Population Strategy Planning headed by a vice prime minister-level official and also appointed a senior presidential secretary to tackle the country’s ultra-low birthrate. I welcome the decision, though it is belated. But the launch of the command center to orchestrate population policy will not ensure a successful resolution of the problem. The job certainly requires cooperation from all walks of life.
The self-preservation instinct is the mightiest instinct of all living creatures. Without it, they would have disappeared long ago. But a pitiful lack of that instinct forces contemporary Koreans to move a step closer to their extinction. There can be many reasons behind their perilous path, but the biggest reason is apparently excessive competition. A single solution can’t solve the dilemma. I think that universities can help turn situation around. The following are my suggestions for tackling the challenge on three fronts: employment, child-rearing, and private education costs.
The first involves employment. Without a job, one cannot get married or have a child. There are 300,000 youths looking for jobs in Korea, implying a job crisis. But companies also have much trouble finding qualified workers. This gap primarily stems from a critical “mismatch” between the talent fostered by colleges and the talent required by the corporate sector. In other words, universities stop short of cultivating the talent demanded by corporations. The government’s inflexible quota for each department at colleges can’t catch up with society’s demand. Universities are responsible for the widening gap.
If universities and other educational institutions make an effort, they can provide crucial support to narrow the gap. Korea Advanced Institute of Science and Technology (KAIST) has been experimenting with non-regular courses targeting people other than KAIST students over the past three years. Our Software Education Center has been teaching young job seekers. If they pass a certain test after finishing a five-month course, they are awarded a completion certificate. Nearly all of them get a decent job with some of them even launching startups.
The IC Design Education Center also educates such youths for four months. After finishing the course, almost all of them can find a quality job. At the completion ceremony, the students’ faces are filled with pride. Just four months before, they were youths with little hope for their future. There is no restriction on getting admitted to the course. For instance, a person who studied humanities at college also can apply for the course. Can there be a more fruitful course than this?
Other universities can certainly use the KAIST model. KAIST annually produces approximately 300 youths who complete those extracurricular courses. If 100 universities can join the crusade, they can raise about 30,000 IC designers each year. Of course, each university can educate them according to their own guidelines.
The second issue involves reducing the burden of raising a child on parents. Given my own experience, the biggest problem comes when a baby keeps crying without sleep. Some go to sleep after their mother rocks the baby in her arms. Breast-feeding also can work a miracle, but mothers must gently pat their baby on the back until the baby burps. Or mothers should put the newborn in a stroller to go outside.
There lies AI’s role. It will be even better if an AI-based cradle can be developed to make newborns feel at ease by rocking them and playing lullabies. An AI cradle can also be developed to help newborns to drink milk in bottles and burp on their own through an automatic adjustment of reclining degrees.
An app to closely monitor pregnant women’s health to prevent miscarriages also can be developed. Though such devices have not yet been released, companies have already acquired the technology needed to produce them. If a specific goal is set and an investment is made, they can easily develop such devices. Technology will significantly reduce the burden for child-rearing for parents.
The third issue is the deepening concern about the increasing cost of private education for children. Here too, universities have a due role to play. The biggest reason for worries about private education is the vertical College Scholastic Ability Test (CSAT). As the scores of the once-a-year exam determine what university students can go to, high schoolers must bet all they have on the test. But if universities can gain autonomy over college admissions, it can solve most of the problem.
First of all, questions in the CSAT should be easy. The government needs to lower the differentiation level of the test and grant much more autonomy to universities over admissions. In that case, schools will admit students based on their own tradition and philosophy, including their reflection of students’ competitiveness in fields other than academics.
This is the way the United States — the origin of Korea’s CSAT — adopted. Full scorers of the U.S. SAT number over 1,000 each year. Each university admits students according to their own standards. Under this system, high school students don’t have to undergo an overheated competition every year. That could trigger another type of college admissions competition, but will surely reduce all the negative effects of over-competition.
An exemplary case is KAIST’s admissions system. We don’t cherish CSAT scores. If a student basically likes math and science, what counts most is the spirit of exploration. We have also started offering benefits to students from families with more than three children or from multicultural families since last year.
These students show a high satisfaction rate with their school life at KAIST. In Korea, a number of college students are voluntarily leaving their schools to prepare for medical college admissions. At KAIST, the rate is very low. That’s because our students chose an institution that fits them. That was possible because KAIST, under the jurisdiction of the Ministry of Science and ICT, can exercise autonomy over admitting students. If other universities can have such autonomy, they will develop their own admissions systems that fit their own guidelines. Of course, it will be difficult for us to relieve all the stress from over-competition — which makes Koreans increasingly shun marriage and having babies — all at once. But if our society continues making effort slowly but steadily, it will surely get better.
Translation by the Korea JoongAng Daily staff.
with the Korea JoongAng Daily
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