South Korea’s most prestigious university wants to make Vietnam the location of its first overseas campus, part of an internationalisation strategy billed as putting “obligation and responsibility” above revenue streams.
Seoul National University believes it can pass on academic expertise in development informed by South Korea’s rapid transformation into an advanced market economy, presenting that as a motivation for its overseas-student recruitment and plans for a branch campus. Junki Kim, Seoul National’s dean of international affairs, highlights the experience of South Korea, a nation with few natural resources, in making education a cornerstone of economic growth.
The Organisation for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD) forecasts that by 2025, South Korea will have the highest proportion of university graduates in the world — 80 percent of the population aged 25-44. “When many of the developing nations are looking for ways in which they can improve through the learning process, we can provide that knowledge,” says Prof. Kim.
According to Kim, countries such as Vietnam and Cambodia need “different patterns of growth” to develop human resources in areas in which we have done relatively well, citing industries as diverse as medical services, IT, engineering and shipbuilding. “In order to do so it needs human capital. We have been doing that; we have been providing very able people over the years,” he says.
Kim adds that Seoul National would like to start its Vietnam campus “modestly” by offering courses in development, public administration or public policy, and then gradually develop a full-scale outpost. Since the price at which tuition fees can increase is capped by the government — a rule that applies to both domestic and overseas students — there’s little scope for charging overseas students higher fees.
By contrast, he recalled a representative of the University of California, Los Angeles discussing the recruitment of overseas students to “fill the gap” left by California’s budgetary crisis and declining state funding. “We can’t do that. Also, our business model is different. We are attracting overseas students as part of our obligation and responsibility to developing nations,” he says.
(Excerpted and adapted from Times Higher Education)