(EDITORIAL from the Korea Herald on Dec. 12)

University, Inc.

With the plan to incorporate Seoul National University into a non-profit public
organization approved at a recent Cabinet meeting, the government is setting out
to launch a process of legislation.

If the process proceeds without a hitch, the
university is expected to be reborn next March as a public institution of higher
education freed from strict government control.
When it is incorporated, the university will no longer have to be managed as a
bureaucracy-ridden government agency. Its organization needs to be changed to one
similar to that of a resilient private-sector entity. Such a reform is needed not
only for Seoul National University but 40-odd national universities throughout
the nation.
One of the most serious problems with Seoul National University, and with all
other national universities for that matter, is that it has no proper way to
reward faculty members for their outstanding performances in teaching and
research and penalize those who are evaluated to be badly underperforming. As a
result, almost all faculty members are virtually treated equal as government
employees. No wonder the university is not placed high in international rankings,
though it may be the most prestigious institution of higher education in Korea.
The university needs to improve its performance, as it has promised in its recent
report on incorporation. What it needs to place at the core of its reform program
is speedy transition to meritocracy. The practice of applying the same pay scale
to all faculty members is outdated, to say the least. The university needs to
improve its evaluation system, make pay annually negotiable and have each faculty
member's performance reflected in remuneration. Whether or not to promote a
faculty member must be also determined by the evaluation outcome.
The university needs a strong leadership if it wishes to be in the global
academia what Samsung Electronics is in the international business world. What it
needs to do promptly in this regard is change the current process of selecting
its president by the direct vote of faculty members.
In the wake of the nation's transition from military-backed dictatorships to
democracy in the 1980s, many universities, both national and private, adopted
direct vote as the means of selecting their presidents. Among them was Seoul
National University.
Selection by direct vote may have contributed to democracy on campus. But it is
often cited as an obstacle to reform, with the presidents elected in this manner
accused of blindly rewarding those they are indebted to.
A proposed alternative that merits serious consideration is to set up an
autonomous selection committee empowered to search for candidates not just from
among faculty members of the university but also those from the outside. This
will certainly help cure the university of what its critics call "inbreeding
inertia."
The government promises the same level of support it has provided for the
university when it is incorporated. It also promises to transfer to the
university free of charge the state-owned properties it is using now. All these
are certainly special favors given to the university. The government will have to
commit itself to providing similar largesse to other national universities if it
is to encourage incorporation among them, many of which suspects that it is being
promoted as a means of reducing state subsidies.
This is not to say that Seoul National University, when incorporated, can afford
to stand idly by and live off government support. Instead, it will have to launch
projects with businesses and finance much of its expenditure with earnings from
the projects.
In return for greater autonomy it is granted, it will have to provide better
education, enhance its capacity for research and make greater contributions to
society as a whole. In particular, it will have to increase spending on basic
sciences the private sector shuns funding.
(END)