The end of sociology

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The end of sociology

Published: 27 Nov. 2024, 19:30

Yeom Jae-ho
The author is the president of Taejae University and vice chair of the Presidential Committee on AI.

A recent “funeral” held at a university in Daegu for the shutdown of its 45-year-old department of sociology signifies the ongoing crisis with the study in Korea. According to the latest data from the education ministry, only 48 universities among 247 across the country have a department of sociology. The number of undergraduate students majoring in sociology also fell to 5,246 in 2024 from 6,823 in 2014. The share is abysmally low when considering a total of 1.61 million undergraduate students in 13,474 majors.

As sociology deals with diverse social phenomena, including the relationships between people living in groups, it is an indispensable study for humanity. What really happened to sociology? Prof. Peter Berger (1929-2017), the legendary scholar of sociology at Boston University, pointed to two malaises sweeping the field — its blind worship of methodology and ideological bias — which helped trigger a crisis of sociology.

Korean society is notorious for prioritizing practical majors beneficial to finding jobs over basic studies. The universal fervor for entering medical schools compels even elementary students to rush to private academies to learn middle school-level mathematics in advance. The phenomenon not only fuels early education but also increases the number of high school graduates who aspire to get admitted to medical schools. National statistics show the dismal employment rate of all college graduates at 66.3 percent. Such an alarming stampede to practical studies offering an easy access to finding jobs can be understood particularly given a drastic cut this year by the corporate sector in hiring people in their 20s — an 8.6 percent decrease from last year and a 5.3 percent plunge for those in their 30s.

However, revolutionary changes from the advancement of information technology and AI will certainly alter not only our industrial structure but also the types of our jobs. According to a stunning prediction from the World Economic Forum 2024, AI will have a devastating impact on 44 percent of our existing jobs by 2028. Some experts even expect 85 percent of existing jobs to be replaced by new ones which didn’t exist in the 20th century. Most professions also will be supplanted by novel jobs driven by individuals’ creativity — such as YouTubers or webtoon artists armed with ingenuity.

Jobs that mostly require repetitive works, such as information processing and software development, will be affected first. The medical community also will experience radical changes from the boundless sophistication of AI and remote medicine. With the arrival of automobiles in the 1920s, wagon drivers feared the loss of their jobs. But the number of cars jumped to 29 million in 1929 from a paltry 1 million in 1920. In the end, car driver jobs exponentially increased and drove out carriage drivers from the market.

Some would still be insensitive the AI-led dramatic transformation. But from now, the gig economy buttressed by professional freelancers armed with their AI expertise will prevail. Academia must contemplate if devoting itself to the 20th century education will still be effective in the brave new world of creativity.

50 years have passed since the Korean Foundation for Advanced Studies was established by the late SK Chairman Chey Jong-hyon. The legendary entrepreneur offered full scholarships to promising students to study at private universities in the United States from 1974, when their tuitions amounted to the price of a house in Korea. The foundation focused on helping social sciences students from the start. When asked why, the chairman said, “A number of social scientists will be needed because Korea will be an advanced country 40 to 50 years later.” As he said, the Korean economy has become one of the 10 largest in the world — and the country’s per capita national income of $36,194 exceeded Japan’s last year. But the social cost from the deepening political and social conflicts increases astronomically.

If existing professional jobs are replaced by AI, the humanities and social sciences must resolve societal conflicts based on human imagination and creativity. But lamentably, our society is being swept up by the fervor for medical schools without the wisdom needed to foresee the future. The end of sociology and the humanities at our colleges symbolizes the fall of our intellect.