Assembly Voice looks into key issues and controversial bills through a series of interviews with rival lawmakers who lead the legislative debate at the National Assembly ― Ed.


Sky-high college tuition has been a thorny social problem over the past few years. Students took to the streets in protest. Rival parties locked horns over the solutions. Universities, on their part, complained that the debate derived from populism that may hurt their autonomy.

The political parties are expected to bicker intensely over tuition fees in the lead up to the December presidential election, as the issue is widely anticipated to sway the direction of young votes.

The Saenuri Party’s presidential candidate Park Geun-hye, met university students Thursday during her first campaign week, giving her prioritized attention and promising to reduce their burden. The Democratic United Party has been organizing relay rallies, and its first bill for the 19th National Assembly addresses tuition fee cuts.

Both pledge to reduce the tuition costs through increased subsidies and interest exemptions for student loans.

But while the Saenuri Party focuses on a gradual approach of step-by-step subsidies for safer state financing, the DUP upholds immediate and far-reaching relief.

Fundamentally deriving from South Korea’s abnormal preference for a college education, the tuition predicament is generally attributed to an excess number of colleges and universities’ questionable finance structures and lack of regulation.

While some claim the government should ensure an equal right to learn with wider subsidies, others argue larger subsidies would only protect insolvent colleges without touching on the fundamental problem.

In a country where eight out of 10 high school graduates go on to college, the cost of tuition has been rapidly surging since the late 1990s. The average annual tuition marked 7.37 million won as of 2010, rising at a rate double or triple inflation. The ratio of a household’s average spending on higher education was 6.4 percent as of 2010. Recent data by the Education Ministry showed that the total amount of student loans exceeded 2.6 trillion won.

The issue reached a boiling point in May 2011, when thousands of students rallied nationwide, calling for cheaper education after four suicides by elite students, reportedly contributed to by the pressure of tuition and their grade performances.

Helped by the government’s hurried measures the same year such as the state scholarship program, average tuition costs have finally started to decline, albeit at a small rate of 2-3 percent a year.

It is said to require 7 trillion won to halve the current 14 trillion won in fees paid by Korean college students.

Auxiliary problems are exposed along the way, such as state universities’ forced donations and private school foundations’ disputable operations.

By Lee Joo-hee (jhl@heraldcorp.com)


Saenuri prepares ‘realistic,’ categorized support

The ruling Saenuri Party’s Rep. Kim Se-yeon said the party’s tuition cut measures are all about being able to realistically provide more assistance to students in need of support.

“The DUP is saying they will support half of the tuition to every student, rich or poor, while we are saying we will give wider help to students in more need,” said Kim, who represents the Saenuri lawmakers belonging to the National Assembly’s Education, Science and Technology Committee.

Spurred by escalating public calls for wider government help on curbing the college tuition hike, the Saenuri Party has vowed to alleviate the burden upon the April general elections win. As part of the efforts, the party formed a taskforce to research and prepare necessary bills.

The work is now in the final phase, Kim explained, to enable more support to reach needier students by categorizing their income, also in order to minimize misuse of state budget.

“Although the plan needs final touch-ups, we have devised a way to provide phased subsidies based on decile of income,” Kim told The Korea Herald.

For instance, those belonging to the lowest group will be given full scholarship, while the next two to three groups will be subsidized with 75 percent of tuition, the next with 50 percent and so forth. The top decile would naturally be excluded from the benefit, Kim explained.

“We will also prepare the 7 trillion won required to halve the tuition, of which 2 trillion won is already being provided through various state scholarships,” Kim said.

Of the remainder, 3.5 trillion won will come from the government, while the 1.5 trillion won will be procured by each university, he explained, because private schools have room to reduce their construction or operating costs.

As part of the incentives for the universities, the Saenuri Party is contemplating providing tax deductions for the specific amount of contributions that the school secures autonomously.

With regard to the DUP’s calls to abolish “giseong hoebi,” obligatory support fees collected by state universities to finance additional operation costs, Kim said it would require reforming universities’ financial and accounting structures, such as by singling out educational expenditures.

The DUP has been opposed to such reform measures claiming it would lead to state colleges becoming incorporated.

“So it is pretty contradictory for the DUP to demand one thing and oppose the other,” Kim said.

The Saenuri Party also believes it is time to oust insolvent colleges as the number of students enrolling to such schools is declining, and said the DUP’s plans were irresponsible for devising a state budget to be used to help colleges that are already not self-sufficient.

“Simply put, Saenuri is aiming to directly support the students, while the DUP is focused on supporting the schools.”

Adding that the Saenuri is also willing to fix its shortfalls by easing the performance-based scholarship restrictions, Kim said the tuition fix should be long-term, without hurting the school’s autonomy.

He also urged colleges to actively cooperate as they have the public duty as recipients of state subsidies.

By Lee Joo-hee (jhl@heraldcorp.com)


DUP pushes bigger education budget to cut tuition fees

The main opposition Democratic United Party is focused on prioritizing the state budget on education and curbing private colleges’ irregularities to achieve the half-price tuition, said Rep. Park Hong-keun.

“The ruling Saenuri Party may have initiated the term ‘half-price tuition’ but they are now papering over the problem by suggesting superficial alternatives similar to a state scholarship,” Park told the Korea Herald.

Former civic activist and first-term lawmaker, Park is an active member of the DUP’s special committee on the college tuition cut.

“The Saenuri’s idea is to alleviate the tuition burden by allocating 1.75 trillion won ($154.8 million) to the state scholarship budget,” Park said.

“This, however, is not a sufficient solution to the problem as scholarships are mostly based on academic performance and also carry a nuance of charity,” the lawmaker claimed.

The DUP, in particular, criticizes the Saenuri Party’s plan to connect income with scholarship, stating that such measures are little different from the existing state scholarship.

“The government is directly responsible for the drastic tuition hikes over the years as it failed to properly supervise and regulate universities’ finances,” he said.

“It should also realize that students from lower-income families are forced to spend much of their time in part-time jobs to earn their tuition and thus find it difficult to focus on their academic credits, trapped in a vicious circle.”

This is why the DUP insists on immediately cutting the tuition in half, meaning that schools should first lower their fees before talking about scholarships, according to Park.

To respond to conservative voters’ concern that all-out financial support could lead to the abuse of taxpayers’ money, the DUP is planning to submit a bill on higher education finances.

“Korea’s budget for higher education is much lower than 1 percent of its total tax revenues, which is the average figure for OECD countries,” he said. “Our plan is not to increase the taxes but to prioritize the education budget over other state projects.”

According to the DUP’s draft bill, the government is to raise the education budget gradually, until it catches up with the OECD average level by 2017.

To tackle the problem fundamentally, the liberal party will also focus on eradicating corruption in private schools, Park said.

“Private schools are relatively free from regulations and thus often involved in irregularities,” he said.

Park claimed that the public role of education should be put above the schools’ rights to autonomy.

“This is why the DUP chose the tuition cut as its top campaign pledge in the April general elections and the No. 1 bill in the 19th National Assembly.”

Various bills have already been presented by DUP lawmakers, including one to set the ceiling of tuition submitted by Rep. Han Myeong-sook, and a revision to the higher education law to restrict college tuition hikes set forth by Rep. Lee Sang-min.

By Bae Hyun-jung  (tellme@heraldcorp.com)