Increase in Liberal Arts Students Taking Leaves Due to Employment Difficulties... SKY Universities Are No Exception

55% of Leave-of-Absence Students at Major Seoul Universities Are in Humanities
Experts Say "Employment Difficulties and Cross-Applications Lead to Science-Centered Focus"

The proportion of humanities students taking a leave of absence has significantly increased due to the ongoing employment difficulties.

According to Jongno Academy on the 2nd, an analysis of the leave of absence trends at major universities in the Seoul area over the past five years showed that among 33,181 students on leave at Seoul National University, Yonsei University, and Korea University, 18,065 (54.4%) were from the humanities fields.

The leave of absence rate for natural sciences students was 45.6%, with a gap of 8.9 percentage points (2,949 students) between the humanities and natural sciences.

This gap is the largest in the past five years based on these three universities. The gap was 3.9 percentage points in the 2018 academic year, 4.5 percentage points in 2019, 5.7 percentage points in 2020, and 5.8 percentage points in 2021, showing a continuous upward trend.

Among the three universities, Yonsei University had the highest proportion of humanities students on leave at 56.2%, followed by Korea University at 54.4%, and Seoul National University at 50.1%.

Expanding the scope to 16 major universities in the Seoul area, the proportion of humanities students on leave was still higher than that of natural sciences students. In the 2022 academic year, the total number of humanities students on leave at these 16 universities was 85,830 (55.0%), which is 10 percentage points higher than natural sciences students.

The universities with the highest proportions of humanities students on leave were Sogang University at 63.5%, Chung-Ang University at 59.0%, Dongguk University at 56.0%, University of Seoul at 54.6%, and Sungkyunkwan University at 52.7%, in that order.

Lim Seong-ho, CEO of Jongno Academy, analyzed, “With the employment difficulties in the humanities, cross-application of natural sciences students to humanities in the integrated CSAT, and the expansion of medical school quotas, all situations and policies are centered on the natural sciences, which is likely to increase the concerns of humanities students.”

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