Nine Key National Universities Freeze Tuition Fees This Year... Including Kyungpook National University, Pusan National University, Kangwon National University, and Chonnam National University

Tuition Frozen for 16 Consecutive Years
"Sharing the Pain with the Public"

Nine national flagship universities consisting of Kyungpook National University, Kangwon National University, Gyeongsang National University, Pusan National University, Chonnam National University, Jeonbuk National University, Jeju National University, Chungnam National University, and Chungbuk National University announced on the 12th that they have decided to freeze undergraduate tuition fees for the 2025 academic year.

Currently, national flagship universities and other national universities have had tuition fees frozen for 16 years, causing significant financial difficulties in education and research, but they made the difficult decision to freeze tuition fees. This was a magnanimous decision to share the pain of the public and students suffering from high exchange rates and high inflation.

Main Building, Kyungpook National University

Even with the tuition freeze, universities have agreed to make strenuous efforts to reduce budgets to prevent any qualitative decline in education and research.

The presidents of the national flagship universities particularly demanded government policy and financial support to realize the per-student education cost at the level of Seoul National University so that regional universities can contribute to balanced regional development and secure global competitiveness. If such support is not provided in the future, tuition increases will be inevitable starting next year.

They also pointed out that some media organizations evaluate universities based on the total amount of nominal scholarships, which is absolutely advantageous to private universities with high tuition fees, and argued that evaluating based on the ratio of scholarship payments to tuition fees would be a more reasonable assessment.

The presidents of the national flagship universities spoke in unison, saying, “Considering the difficult economic situation of the government and the public, we have made this difficult decision after in-depth consultations,” and added, “We ask for the government’s active financial support so that national universities can maintain the public nature of higher education, contribute to regional development, and secure global-level competitiveness.”

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