“Ghettoized” Courses for Foreign University Students

As the country's number of foreign students keeps on declining, the Ministry of Education has pushed for a proposal to let colleges and universities develop specialized courses or departments in the fields of IT and shipping. South Korea is known globally for these industries, so it doesn't come as a surprise that it wants to attract international students to such courses.

This revision to the higher education law will supposedly help attract 200,000 foreign students by 2023. It also hopes to increase spending (among the students) to 1.5 trillion won within 5 years. The current spending is 796 billion won. The state will offer regional dormitories and other services to support their stay. According to the ministry, it's still in the process of budget negotiation with the Ministry of Strategy and Finance, and hopes to reach a final decision in September.

The main goal is to increase the number of foreign students to 5% (within 8 years) from the general student population. This figure should be up by 2% from 2014. Data from government reports have shown that their population has dwindled since 2011, when there used to be 89,537 of them. It dropped to 85,923 in 2013 and then 84,891 last year.

While the proposal sounds promising, not everyone thinks so. Top academics from educational organizations abroad have criticized it for developing "ghettoized" courses. These have the potential of isolating foreign students rather than integrating them to the general student body.

According to Philip Altbach, who heads Boston College's Center for International Higher Education, the Ministry of Education's plan is "not only unlikely to succeed but is bad policy". It also "flies in the face of current thinking about effective international education policy".

"If South Korea is planning on earning significant income from international enrolment, it is not at all assured that sufficient numbers will be attracted, and, in fact, recent trends are down", Altbach comments.

He adds that international education should provide the students the "chance to interact with domestic students so that mutual learning can take place".

Institute of International Education president Allan Goodman also says that schools should be able to "allow access to the wider offerings of the university for those international students fluent enough in the local language to do so".

Then again, he emphasized that South Korea has a number of initiatives that let foreign students participate in multi-cultural higher education - including scholarships, English-language courses, better living and study conditions, short and long-term exchange programs, and support systems.