World Class Universities

06 Mar 2009

The World Class University project is a higher education subsidy programme designed by the Korean government.

The programme invites international scholars with advanced research capacities to collaborate with Korean university faculty members and to establish new academic programmes in key growth-generating fields.

With a view to enhancing the competence of Korean universities and nurturing high-quality human resources, the World Class University (WCU) project seeks to achieve two specific goals:

  • Enhance national higher education and industrial competitiveness in interdisciplinary fields.
  • Transform Korean universities into world-class research institutions.

List of universities

On Monday 1 December 2008 the Korean government publicized its list of 18 universities, which included Seoul National University, selected to benefit from the WCU project. For a five-year period - from 2008-2012 - the project will provide funds to finance a total of 52 research projects proposed by the schools as a means of strengthening their international competitiveness.

Specifically, the money will go towards establishing new departments and recruiting internationally renowned scholars.
 

Research plans

A total of 52 universities had submitted a total of 314 research plans to the project committee, consisting of domestic and overseas professors, which spent the past two months evaluating each university's proposals.

As expected, strong protests were voiced by universities that failed to make the list. Even for those that were selected, however, there is a wide gap in how much of the project’s 830 billion won they will receive over the next five years.

While Seoul National University is to get 32 billion won and KAIST 16 billion won, others will get less than 1 billion.
 

Provincial universities

According to the Ministry of Education, Science and Technology, an additional 20 billion won is being earmarked for universities outside the capital, as many provincial universities failed to meet the project standards. These universities have not yet been chosen.

For those that have been selected already, the ministry will be closely monitoring and evaluating their performance in implementing the proposed plans; universities that fail to meet the ministry’s criteria will lose their funding support.
 

More information

For more information about the WCU project, please see the following links:

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