The aftereffects from the blacklisting of 43 universities for bad management continued to hit the university community.
Seoul-based Sangmyung University President Lee Hyung-cheon stepped down, while Kundong University in North Gyeongsang Province faces a sharp reduction in freshmen enrollment.
Sangmyung University said Thursday that its board of directors accepted the resignation of president Lee Hyung-cheong. Lee was to retire on March 31, next year, but submitted his resignation Wednesday to take responsibility for the school being placed on the list. On Wednesday, 12 other faculty members of the university, including the vice president and deans, also expressed their intention to resign.
Sangmyung University has been included in the list of 43 schools that will see government subsidies cut or denied next year. State assistance such as subsidies is designed to ease tuition burden for students.
“We have never received penalties from the government since the school was founded, nor shown financial weakness,” said a university official.
Sangmyung University also argued in their school bulletin that although the school has continued to raise questions about inquiry criteria, the Education Ministry had never listened nor responded to its request.
Kundong University in the historical town of Andong has been ordered the ministry to halve its freshmen enrollment quota for next year. The university has been placed on the roster of badly managed schools twice since last year.
The Education Ministry ordered the school foundation of Kundong University to reduce its freshmen enrollment by 53.5 percent from 304 to 182 as it failed to satisfy the number of necessary faculty members.
Kundong University claims that as it was approved as a four-year university just five years ago in 2006, it is hard to meet some standards such as faculty recruitment and student attendance rates.
“We hope the government will give recently founded schools a grace period during which they can settle school affairs,” said a university official.
Two days earlier, Myungshin University and Sunghwa College received a shutdown order from the government.
By Lee Woo-young (
wylee@heraldcorp.com)
