[The Editors' Verdict] Korean Universities: Global Low-Paid Second-Rate Jobs

A ‘Korean American’ professor holding U.S. citizenship who is currently employed in the science and engineering departments of a top-level domestic university wishes to reacquire Korean nationality. Born in Korea and having graduated from this university’s undergraduate program, he studied in the U.S., obtained citizenship, and was invited back as a professor at his alma mater about ten years ago. He continues to use his Korean name as is and says he has no intention of returning to the U.S.

However, the university authorities are earnestly urging him to “remain an American,” discouraging him from naturalizing. This is because if he returns as a Korean and is removed from the small list of foreign faculty members, the university’s foreign professor ratio will drop, and the ‘internationalization score’ assigned by overseas university ranking agencies will be reduced.

This professor’s case reveals the superficial internationalization reality of our universities. Seoul National University, the top university in Korea, has only 108 foreign professors, which is just 4% of the total 2,278 faculty members. Moreover, among the 27 national and public universities including Seoul National University, nearly half (47%) of the foreign professors are of Korean descent (according to the Ministry of Education). In contrast, the University of Hong Kong, often compared with Seoul National University in global university rankings, has a foreign professor ratio exceeding 50%.

Hong Kong, like Korea, relies solely on human resources and is fiercely competitive in attracting talent. The three prestigious universities in Hong Kong?University of Hong Kong, Chinese University of Hong Kong, and Hong Kong University of Science and Technology?face no obstacles in recruiting global scholars. No matter how exceptional the compensation packages are, the Hong Kong Education Bureau does not intervene. When the Chinese University of Hong Kong recruited an American economist close to winning a Nobel Prize, they provided a faculty apartment, covered international school tuition for the professor’s children, and even guaranteed two round-trip ‘homecoming air tickets’ to New York annually. When this university brought in a 28-year-old rising star from Denmark in the world of business academia, they offered a salary surpassing that of Ivy League schools. Hong Kong University of Science and Technology went even further, later poaching this professor with an even higher salary.

Scenes of offering VIP-level contracts and flying global talent to Korea, as seen in Hong Kong universities, have long been familiar not only in Korean corporations but also in professional sports and the entertainment industry. Only universities remain like frogs in a well, which is a shared responsibility of university authorities and the Ministry of Education. Despite criticisms for over a decade that domestic faculty compensation is far below the expectations of overseas scholars, no university has been heard to adjust compensation to global standards. The Ministry of Education also bears responsibility. Even if universities want to offer high salaries, they cannot afford to due to the 15-year freeze on tuition fees imposed by the Ministry of Education.

Most foreign professors hired with great difficulty leave after their first contract ends. This is because domestic universities pay lower salaries than competing universities abroad, such as in the U.S., and do not provide adequate financial rewards for expertise (Ministry of Justice Immigration and Foreign Policy Headquarters, ‘Analysis Study on the Entry and Stay of Foreign Professionals’). Meanwhile, Korean universities have come to be shunned by genuine foreigners and are pleading with Korean professors disguised as foreigners to “maintain their foreign nationality.” South Korea is now an advanced country where no field is treated as ‘cheap second-rate.’ The only exception left is universities. How long must Korean university professorships continue to be regarded as low-paid, second-rate jobs in the global academic community?

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