Tuition fees at universities dropped for the second consecutive year this year. True, the average margin was miniscule at 0.46 percent. Still, it may be said that the small decline cannot be belittled when it is compared with the whopping tuition increases in the go-go years of the previous decade.

The recent taming of the bullish tuition fees is nonetheless dimmed by President Park Geun-hye’s election promise to cut them by half during the next five years of her governance. University tuition fees remain at an exorbitantly high level in Korea, as disclosed by a 2013 report on education indicators from the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development.

According to the OECD report, the 2011 annual average tuition fees of the national and other public universities stood at $5,395 in Korea on the basis of purchasing power parity ― the fourth highest among the 25 OECD member states that had submitted information for the tabulation. Tuition fees at private universities were $9,383, twice as high as those at the public institutions of tertiary education.

In Korea, the portion of government spending in the total expenditure on public education rose from 58.9 percent in 2005 to 61.6 percent 2010. The share of government expenditure is set to grow in the year ahead, as the Park administration is committed to increasing funds for state scholarships and continuing to provide matching funds for universities that are cutting their tuition fees.

It will have to spend much more on university education so that tuition fees will be lowered by a big margin, if not to half the prices, and more scholarships will be provided for students in need. At the same time, the administration needs to improve the efficacy of government support for university education.

Subsidies provided for universities and scholarships for students failed to produce much of the intended effects.

The administration committed itself to providing matching funds for the reductions universities made in their tuition fees and the scholarships they provided. Subsidies provided in this manner were earmarked for scholarships and, as such, were of little help in improving the finances of the universities involved, although they were effective in reducing the burden of students. No wonder the tuition fees were cut a meager 0.46 percent this year.

A greater mistake was made in the government’s direct provision of scholarships for students from low-income households. The administration mistakenly excluded financial income for households when it was screening scholarship candidates. As a result, 2 out of every 10 recipients were found to have been unqualified.

The administration will have to keep increasing its budget for scholarships, as it did from 1.75 trillion won last year to 2.77 trillion won this year. But it is more urgent to fix the abovementioned problems.