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Nine national universities to keep undergraduate tuitions frozen in 2025

Published: 10 Jan. 2025, 18:35 Updated: 13 Jan. 2025, 09:42

Oh Seok-hwan, vice minister of education, addresses a tuition issue during a virtual meeting with the heads of Chungbuk and Chonnam national universities on Wednesday. [NEWS1]

Nine national universities in Korea have decided to maintain tuition fees for undergraduates, including international undergraduates, for the 2025 academic year.

The decision was made during a virtual meeting of the council of national university presidents on Friday morning.

All member universities — Kangwon National University, Chungbuk National University, Kyungpook National University, Gyeongsang National University, Pusan National University, Chonnam National University, Jeonbuk National University, Jeju National University and Chungnam National University — unanimously agreed to keep tuition fees for undergraduates at the same level as the previous year.

Seoul National University made an early decision in December via its tuition deliberation committee to freeze undergraduate tuition.

Although tuition fees have been frozen for 16 consecutive years, leading to financial challenges in education and research, the universities chose this path to ease the burden on students already struggling with high exchange rates and rising living costs, the council said.

However, to prevent a decline in the quality of education and research, the universities intend to seek policy and financial support from the government. They aim to adjust educational expenditure per student to a level comparable to that of Seoul National University, which they believe will promote balanced regional development and enhance global competitiveness.

The council noted that tuition increases might become unavoidable starting in 2026 if such support is not provided.

The council also expressed concerns about the evaluation index used by the press to rank universities.

They argued that national universities are disadvantaged in rankings due to the inclusion of "scholarship amount" as an indicator.

Since national scholarships are awarded within the range of tuition fees and tuition at national universities is only half that of private universities, these evaluations fail to accurately represent the universities' overall performance, according to the council.

Oh Seok-hwan, vice minister of education, previously discussed the tuition issue with the heads of Chungbuk and Chonnam national universities during a virtual meeting on Wednesday. The council requested additional financial support options for schools to maintain tuition levels.

One council proposal was to expand the special higher education accounts, which partially allocate education tax revenue used for kindergarten, elementary and junior high to university funding. Introduced in 2023, this special account, however, is set to expire at the end of this year.

Another proposal involves providing more flexible financial support for national universities. Currently, the government’s primary financial support initiative for state-run universities is a promotion project, which distributed 571 billion won ($390 million) last year to national universities, with individual schools receiving between 3 billion and 20 billion won.

One university president criticized the ministry, saying, “We won’t be able to fix a leaking roof because the money provided is earmarked for specific purposes.”

BY CHOI MIN-JI,WOO JI-WON [[email protected]]