The Lee Jae-myung administration is making substantial efforts to overcome the concentration of resources in the Seoul metropolitan area and to promote balanced regional development. "Balanced growth based on decentralization" is among its major policy tasks, and the Presidential Committee on Regional Eras is pursuing a strategy known as "five poles and three special zones." In education, the government has launched a policy of building up regional flagship national universities to the level of Seoul National University, dubbed "Making 10 Seoul National Universities," and is also implementing the Regional Innovation System and Education (RISE) program, in which local governments lead efforts to grow regions and universities together. Recently, however, the government announced that it would waive tuition for students entering major regional national universities starting next year and that it had set aside the necessary budget. The idea of reducing tuition at national universities to zero is a revolutionary change, and from the standpoint of stressing the public role of education, it can be seen as desirable. Yet both "Making 10 Seoul National Universities" and the tuition waiver apply only to national universities, which makes them unfair to private institutions.
Every reform has its bright and dark sides, so the benefits and drawbacks must be weighed carefully. The policy of waiving tuition at regional national universities has not gone through enough public debate. The intent behind the idea is easy to understand. Reviving the regions requires talented people to stay there, and free tuition was presumably seen as an effective incentive. Korea does have a precedent: when the Korea Advanced Institute of Science and Technology (KAIST) was established, it drew top science and engineering talent by offering free education along with military service exemptions. But if regional national universities now offer free education, will strong students really give up on universities in the capital region and enroll locally? Various surveys show that what students weigh most heavily in choosing a school is not the tuition burden but employment prospects after graduation and the university's reputation. On that score, it is uncertain whether free education at regional national universities will have as large an effect as hoped.
In fact, a survey by the polling firm Research & Research, commissioned by the Korea Association of Private University Presidents, found that even if the free tuition policy for regional national universities takes effect, the share of high school seniors nationwide who said they would enroll at a regional university rose only from 39.5% to 40.9%, an increase of 1.4 percentage points. Meanwhile, the share hoping to attend a regional flagship national university rose 4.3%, while the share hoping to attend a regional private university fell 2.2%. In other words, the effect of free education at regional national universities is less about reducing enrollment at capital-area universities than about shifting students within the same region from private universities to national ones. Ultimately, the policy is likely to push regional private universities — already struggling with a shrinking school-age population and years of frozen tuition — into even greater difficulty.
A more serious problem is that the policy could actually work against revitalizing regional universities. The trouble with national universities, like all state institutions, is that they tend to be insensitive to outside change and content with the status quo. There is no chance the organization will collapse, and there is no strong leadership to drive necessary reform. When a private university in the same region serves as a competitor, however, the national university has no choice but to change. Private universities generally respond more quickly to the practical changes their region needs. If the free tuition policy at regional national universities drives out prestigious private universities capable of competing, it would be a case of bad money driving out good.
The decline of prestigious regional private universities would also be a grave matter that could shake the entire Korean higher education ecosystem. Private institutions currently carry more than three-quarters of higher education in Korea. Unlike national universities, which turn out similar graduates through largely uniform curricula, private schools have offered diversity in higher education through highly distinctive programs. If such private universities collapse in the regions, even long-established private universities in the capital area will not be immune. Because the effects of free education at regional national universities are more complex than they appear, the government should think harder about the consequences and at minimum design a system that allows private universities to compete on equal terms.
