The main opposition Democratic United Party recently rekindled one of the most sensitive issues in Korean society by revealing that it is considering including the merger of all national universities in its presidential election pledges.
Rep. Lee Yong-sup, the DUP chief policymaker, said Sunday the merger could be completed by 2017 if his party won the election on Dec. 19.
His remark has drawn keen attention from the public and media as the measure would lead to the virtual abolition of Seoul National University, the country’s most prestigious institution of higher education.
SNU has long been subject to ambivalent perceptions.
On the one hand, it has been recognized as a top academic institution essential to enhancing the country’s global competitiveness, but on the other hand it has been criticized for causing social inefficiency and conflict.
It has become emblematic of the academic hierarchy characterizing Korean society, in which children are driven into fierce competition to enter SNU and other prestigious universities. Excessive expenditure on private tutoring has weighed heavily on households, crippling the public education system and deepening the rift between rich and poor.
Like other universities, SNU is in urgent need of reform to become more globally competitive and thus help boost the national competitiveness.
Few Koreans would agree that it has been successful in educating the best brains to be prepared for intensifying international competition and recruiting the best faculty based on transparent and objective standards.
These criticisms, however, do not justify any half-baked ideas to restructure the nation’s top educational institution.
Regardless of what stance to take on elitism, the opposition party’s move to merge all state-funded universities ― and thus dissolve SNU ― needs to be scrutinized in terms of its motives and the substantive results it would bring.
The DUP chief policymaker said the merger would help unshackle young students from fierce academic competition, reduce spending on private tutoring and abolish discrimination based on which school one graduated from. But it seems natural for some to raise suspicions that the move was politically calculated to draw support from regional voters and those who feel left behind in the educational competition.
The idea of integrating national universities into a unified system was first floated back in 2004 during the presidency of Roh Moo-hyun, whose confidants now lead the liberal main opposition party.
The scheme envisaged students taking lectures freely at all campuses and receiving a joint diploma.
In the face of public objection against attributing all educational problems to SNU, Roh’s office put a lid on the controversy in 2005 by assuring he had no intention of pushing ahead with the merger.
Since then, there has been no great change that makes it more necessary to overhaul the public university system in this way.
Aside from being apparently engineered by election-year considerations, the DUP move is also unlikely to be effective in improving the competitiveness of national universities.
Many experts have expressed skepticism about whether the merger of SNU and other provincial state-funded universities without regard to differences in their academic levels and infrastructure would lead the new scheme to function properly and facilitate their development.
The DUP official referred to the French university system as a model his party’s plan might be based on.
It may be beside the point to benchmark a system that has come under criticism for holding down national competitiveness and has faced calls for being revamped.
The public’s dominant view appears to be that though SNU has and causes many problems, it would not help sharpen the country’s competitive edge to merge it with other state-funded universities.
It would be a more proper and positive approach to strengthen support for other universities while encouraging SNU to solve its problems and become better in carrying out its role. The DUP is advised to roll back its latest initiative, seen to be made with the election in mind, to prevent Korean society from becoming embroiled in another unproductive debate over whether to change the educational system into a version that has already proved ill-suited to the era of global competition.
