What if your major becomes unable to get enough financial support or even disappears due to the project the Ministry of Education pushes forward? This is actually occuring by the name of the “PRIME Project.” This project is causing a few problems such as sudden rearrangement or closures of certain departments and absence of communication with students beforehand. The Argus covered the PRIME Project in-depth regarding the problems and the causes of this issue.

By Lee Jae-won, Byeon Hee-jin
Associate Editors

As of May 3, the sorrow and pleasure of universities nationwide has been mixed. The Ministry of Education (MOE) announced the 21 accepted universities out of 72 universities that applied for the “Program for Industry needs-Matched Education (PRIME) Project.” This is a project that the MOE pushed forward in order to adjust future personnel demand and requests for universities to reform departments and adjust standards. The selected universities will be financially supported by the government to the tune of 5 billion won a year for the next three years.

However, strong opposition to the PRIME Project was also captured in the struggle to be selected. Some say that universities unilaterally merged or established some departments by following the employment-centered guidelines of the MOE, in order to be chosen as one of the universities. In the June issue, The Argus will report in-depth about this hot potato controversy within the university community.

Background Information

In 2011, some universities tried to close some departments such as the Department of Home Economics at Chung-ang University and the Department of Literary Creation at Dongguk University because of low employment rates. Now, since the MOE started the PRIME Project, it seems like the government is officially letting universities make changes by the employment rate.

What is the “Program for Industry needs-Matched Education (PRIME) Project?”

-Definition
The project requests department reform and standards adjustments considering future personnel needs. The official name is the “Vitalization of Industry-linked Education Leading University Project.” It claims to support “education for needs.”

-Purpose
First, it decreases general entrance quotas because of low birthrates. According to the “2014-2024 Manpower Forecasts” the Ministry of Employment and Labor announced, if the entrance quota of 2014 is maintained, 160 thousand people will have no future. As a result, the MOE has requested that universities decrease their entrance quotas.
Second, in order to resolve mismatches in terms of manpower, they have requested that changes be made structurally to reflect personnel demands. According to the “2014-2024 Manpower Forecasts for Each College Major,” labor supply is higher than its demand within social sciences and education but the opposite is the case as regards engineering and medicine.
Third, to create excellent personnel in certain fields such as the creative economy or within promising industries, the government has encouraged the development of “convergence majors.”

-Category and budget
By choosing 21 universities in total, the government is planning to support them with 201.2 billion won in 2016. Also, 600 billion won is going to be provided in support for the next three years. It is the biggest support project for education to date.
This project is divided into two categories; one is “societal demand leading colleges” and the other is “creation-based leading colleges.” In the case of the first category, nine selected colleges will get 15 billion won each.

What are the problems associated with PRIME?

1) Universities’ department rearrangement issues & concerns as well as the abolition of new departments
The general planning of the PRIME Project was confirmed on Dec. 29, 2015; the application process for universities ended on March 31, 2016; and the final announcement of the chosen universities was made on May 3, 2016. Within just three months the decisions regarding the rearrangement and establishment of departments were fixed.

-Rearrangement of departments
The guidelines that the MOE made demand that universities increase their entrance quotas for departments that have high employment competitiveness, on the other hand, it decrease quotas for those that do not. University headquarters followed the guidelines and carried out such rearrangements in order to be chosen as one of the universities that gets funded.
For example, according to the announcement that took place on Jan. 8, 2016, at Konkuk University is merging nine majors in the College of Animal Life Science and Life Environment Science into the “College of Convergence Life Science.” They also decided to combine the Department of Livestock and Food, Department of Bio-industry and Department of Food and Life Resources into the single “Food related specific Department” and reformed that into seven departments. Sungshin Women’s University also announced a department rearrangement on Feb. 26, 2016 via school media. They moved half of the quota from the Department of Food and Nutrition to the College of Engineering and established the Department of Food Engineering without the agreement of their students.
In the short-term view, this might simply look like a decrease in certain departments. However, if these decreases continue, this might lead to concerns that it infringes on students’ right to learn what they want. Regarding this concern, the General Student Council (GSC) of Ewha Womans University said, “A certain amount of students are needed in order for a class to be opened. As a result, if the quota decreases due to the PRIME Project, the classes that students can take will also decrease.” There is an actual incident that happened similar to this in the past. When Ewha Womans University established its Law School in 2009, the school promised to have lectures open to the undergraduates in the Department of Law. However, it turned out that the number of open lectures decreased so much that students could not even take mandatory classes. The school is now allowing the students to listen to alternative classes so that they can graduate.

-Worries about new departments’ sudden closures
As the MOE chose the universities for the PRIME Project, these selected ones are about to begin making new departments which they promised the MOE they would make on their official applications. However, questions are arising about whether these newly-constructed departments will exist also in future.
Looking at universities’ official project plans submitted to the MOE, you can easily see many of them decided to create convergence majors, especially ones affiliated with Information and Communications Technology (ICT), in consideration of the recent boom in artificial intelligence.
Three PRIME project universities specifically show this trend. Konkuk University decided to create the Departments of Smart Operation Technology, and Smart ICT Convergence Technology. IT Technology and Digital Contents Technology majors will show up starting next year in Sookmyung Women’s University and Wonkwang University respectively.
These plans actually came from the MOE’s guidelines. “With the PRIME Project, the MOE will reinforce fields of study that are in high demand in the job market, solving the problem of job mismatches,” said the Education Minister Lee Joon-sik at a meeting with heads of college presidents in January 2016. However, two points that he emphasized_ “high demand” and “job mismatch” _ do not seem to be appropriate.
As mentioned on page 17, the report by the Ministry of Labor and Employment forecast found that engineering and medical major students would be in short supply. Therefore, the minister was pointing out in his statement that those departments need to be expanded. In reality, however, recent employment rates in the engineering field have dropped to a narrow range since 2011 according to a report by the Korean Education Development Institute. The rate started at 60.6 percent in 2010, changed to 66.7 percent in 2011, 66.3 percent in 2012, 65.6 percent in 2013, and 64.9 percent in 2014.
“The unemployment issue of college graduates is not attributable to job mismatches,” said an official at the Korea University Education Research Institute. “Employment is now difficult regardless of major. The lack of jobs is the biggest problem.”
The Department of Bio-industrial Technologies at Konkuk University was established in 2013 with the purpose of fostering talented students possessing technical development and administrative abilities. However, the university finally abolished this department in early 2016, mentioning the “employment rate” is important for PRIME at the meeting with the students from that department. At Chungbuk National University and Dankook University, similar majors as the one at Konkuk University were founded to match the convergence trend but recently closed due to the stated reason of “low employment rates.”
With the employment rate in the engineering field falling, it is uncertain that such new technology-related majors will survive for a long time. It is possible that numerous departments may suddenly close if they are considered to be disadvantageous in terms of the “employment rate.”

2) Absence of communication with students
Several universities have pushed forward with the state-led college reform plans without holding sufficient discussions with students, as seen in two cases below.
The GSC of Ewha Womans University said its school has continuously proceeded with the project while excluding its students from the process. The GSC requested that the university provide it with its specific plans and consult with the students on PRIME. However, the university set its plan for PRIME with no participation from the students for about three months. As a result, Ewha Womans University was chosen for the project. 
The GSC of Sungshin Women’s University, another university selected for PRIME, also suffered from the same communication problem. “The university pushed the project forward behind closed doors. Students, the direct party involved in this project, were not included in the process,” wrote the GSC in its official document on PRIME.

Why has this situation occurred?

1) Enormous support funds for the PRIME Project
One of the reasons why many universities nationwide have applied for this project is due to the significant amount financial funding offered. Universities lacking financially applied for the project without considering other aspects because the funds they will get for three years if chosen are quite high. The chosen nine universities in the big type will get 15 billion won each. In 2015, 11 out of 20 universities reduced their budget and those 20 universities’ budget averages were about 26.4 billion won. In this situation, the support funds from the PRIME Project amount to more than half of the budgets of most of the universities. In the case of Sookmyung Women’s University, their budget was about 17 billion won last year. They get more than two-thirds of their a year budget by being elected as one of the PRIME Project universities. Huh Seong-sil, the member of “University for Everyone,” an organization of university students, said, “Schools have no choice but to embrace the project guidelines because they are in need of greater funding.”

2) Not including students in the PRIME evaluation
As mentioned above, several universities picked for PRIME applied for it without the inclusion of the students. The MOE’s evaluation made this possible, given that university students were also not included.
In the PRIME evaluation, the MOE assigned certain points to the university’s level of agreement amongst its members. However, the MOE did not specifically look into whether the university really reached agreement with its members, especially students.
“If the supreme decision-making body of each university was in agreement with PRIME, the MOE recognized the university as having reached a consensus,” revealed the MOE in its official position.
The GSC at Ewha Womans University disclosed in an interview with The Argus that student opposition to PRIME was very strong, and it delivered a strong letter of protest to the MOE. However, it was “useless” according to them. “Even though we took action, both the university and the MOE  ignored students’ opinions. None of our actions were effective,” said the GSC. As proven in this case, in the MOE’s evaluation, students were not a consideration.

How to solve this situation

1) MOE needs to respect the autonomy of universities
There are some voices within university communities that feel that the MOE should not artificially lead department reform for societal demands; rather it should be left to universities to make decisions about rearrangements.
Huh Seong-sil also said, “The MOE should not discriminatively support universities through this ‘project’ but should respect the autonomy of universities and just lead the reinforcement of public education.”

2) Universities’ communication and efforts
As selected universities implement the abolishing, combining, and creation of departments, several ripple effects are likely to occur. Student bodies of chosen universities say the universities strive to prevent problems that students might face and hold student hearings as well.
The GSC of Sungshin Women’s University wrote in its document on PRIME, “We, the GSC, are now asking the school to open to us its specific final PRIME plan and modified curriculum for several departments. Also, we are demanding that the school accept student opinions to minimize their difficulties.”

The PRIME Project led by the MOE is not without controversy. The project, which is the largest government subsidy program for Korean higher education institutions, definitely affects numerous university students. The Ministry of Education and especially universities must consider student opinions the most and work hard to reduce their future hardships.