98% of 4-Year Universities Freeze Tuition Fees... Average Tuition Increases by 76,000 Won

Average Tuition Fee for 4-Year Universities in 2021 Academic Year: 6.73 Million KRW
Slight Increase in Average Tuition Due to Engineering Department Enrollment Growth
191 out of 195 Universities Decide to Freeze or Reduce Tuition Fees

Tuition Fees by Major for 4-Year Universities in the 2021 Academic Year, Tuition Fees by Region (Data Provided by Ministry of Education, Korea Council for University Education)

[Asia Economy Reporter Han Jinju] 98% of four-year universities froze tuition fees this year. Due to departmental restructuring, the enrollment quota for the relatively expensive engineering fields increased, raising the average tuition by 76,000 KRW.

On the 30th, an analysis of the April university information disclosure by the Ministry of Education and the University Education Council showed that the average tuition for four-year general universities and education universities in the 2021 academic year was 6,733,500 KRW, up 76,000 KRW from last year.

Among 195 universities, 191 froze or lowered the nominal tuition fees stated on the bill, but the increase in engineering enrollment quotas caused the average tuition burden per student to rise.

Average tuition by field is highest in medicine (9.76 million KRW), followed by arts and physical education (7.73 million KRW), engineering (7.21 million KRW), natural sciences (6.8 million KRW), and humanities and social sciences (5.93 million KRW). By type, average tuition is 7.49 million KRW for private universities and 4.18 million KRW for national and public universities. Universities in the metropolitan area charge 7.61 million KRW, while those outside the metropolitan area charge 6.19 million KRW.

Tuition Status of 4-Year Universities for the 2021 Academic Year (Data Provided by Ministry of Education, Korea Council for University Education)

The average admission fee per student for the 2021 academic year was 1.73 million KRW, down 100,000 KRW from last year. This is 460,000 KRW less than in 2017, before the phased abolition of admission fees began. National and public universities eliminated admission fees starting in the 2018 academic year, and private universities will abolish them from 2023. The average admission fee at private universities decreased by 37.2% (130,000 KRW) compared to last year.

With the activation of non-face-to-face classes due to COVID-19, enrolled students' grades also improved. In 2020, 87.5% of enrolled students earned a B grade or higher per subject, an increase of 15.8 percentage points from the previous year (71.7%). This is because many classes applied absolute grading or relaxed relative grading due to the impact of non-face-to-face classes. The percentage of graduates who scored 80 points or higher when converting graduation GPA to a percentage score was 91.8%, up 1.9 percentage points from the previous year.

Trends in the Proportion of Full-time Faculty Teaching at 4-year Universities for the 2021 Academic Year (Data Provided by the Ministry of Education and the Korea Council for University Education)

The proportion of lectures taught by full-time faculty in the first semester of 2021 was 67.1%, up 0.4 percentage points from the same period last year. The proportion of lectures by adjunct instructors was 21.0%, up 0.6 percentage points from the previous year. The proportion of lectures by full-time faculty at private universities was 68.3%, up 0.5 percentage points from the previous year, 4.8 percentage points higher than national and public universities (63.5%). The proportion at national and public universities increased by 0.3 percentage points from the previous year.

The proportion of small classes with 20 or fewer students was 37.6%, up 0.6 percentage points from the first semester of 2020. Private universities had 38.6%, 4.4 percentage points higher than national and public universities (34.2%), and universities outside the metropolitan area had 37.8%, 0.7 percentage points higher than those in the metropolitan area.

This content was produced with the assistance of AI translation services.