Board won’t discuss chief’s fate

Board directors of the Korea Advanced Institute of Science and Technology on Friday chose not to discuss sacking president Suh Nam-pyo despite the controversy over his policies triggered by the recent suicides of four students.

The 16-person board received a report from KAIST on the latest suicide cases and the school’s plans to go back to providing scholarships to all of its students and to reduce courses conducted in English. But Suh’s removal was not on the agenda.

Oh Myung, chairman of the board, told reporters that the meeting was not intended to discuss whether to dismiss Suh.

“The meeting was for reports on pending issues. We believe discussions on (Suh’s) presidency issue can wait until after we come up with measures to improve the school,” Oh said.

Oh said nothing has been decided yet on the state-funded university’s proposal to scrap its system of granting scholarships to only students who have scored a GPA of 3.0 or higher. Students with a GPA lower than 3.0 had to pay tuition of between 60,000 won and 6 million won under the so-called “punitive” tuition system introduced by Suh, a former MIT professor.

Some students have complained that the punitive tuition system put them under too much stress, while supporters of the system say that it wouldn’t be fair to give out full scholarships to those who don’t study hard.

A number of KAIST professors have also called for reduction of courses conducted in English.

“We lost four students in a school where we should nurture scientific and engineering talents and their dreams. It should never have happened, and I feel deeply responsible,” Suh said at the beginning of the meeting which he attended as one of the board directors.

Noting that excellent students who graduated early from elite high schools came to KAIST, Suh said his university should have paid more attention to “personality education” and vowed to take the best possible steps for that.

By Kim So-hyun (sophie@heraldcorp.com)