At the Department of Electrical Engineering graduate school of Dongshin University, a private university in Naju, South Jeolla Province, artificial intelligence (AI) interpretation services have recently become an essential tool for classes and research activities. This is because the number of foreign students from China, as well as Central Asia and Vietnam, has grown sharply. Since some students struggle to communicate due to limited Korean proficiency, the school has deployed interpreters to support classes and research. With domestic graduate students hard to recruit, foreign students have become key personnel supporting research project execution and laboratory operations. One professor at the university said, "In the past, even when we won research projects, there were almost no master's or doctoral students to actually carry them out." He added, "There are now about 10 foreign students in our lab, more than double the number five years ago, which has allowed us to run the lab stably."
Graduate schools at private universities outside the greater Seoul area, once on the brink of extinction, are being revived by an influx of foreign students. While foreign students were previously concentrated relatively in the humanities and social sciences, they have recently increased in the natural sciences and engineering fields as well, filling the manpower gaps in laboratories unable to recruit domestic students.
According to an analysis by Seoul Economic Daily of disclosure data from the Higher Education in Korea portal on the 26th, the number of foreign degree-program students in the natural sciences and engineering fields at general graduate schools of private universities outside the greater Seoul area rose 23.6% from 1,607 in 2023 to 1,987 in 2025. The number of foreign STEM degree-program students at regional private university graduate schools has been on an upward trend over the past two years. In some graduate schools, the foreign share among natural sciences and engineering students reaches 70-80%, indicating that dependence on foreign students is rapidly increasing.
The growing number of foreign students is playing a central role in STEM laboratories, taking on research project execution, experiments, and surveys of overseas papers and cases. A professor at the electrical engineering graduate school of a private university in Daegu said, "With domestic graduate students hard to recruit, foreign students are filling the manpower gaps for carrying out research projects." He added, "Because they broadly gather papers and empirical cases from their home countries, they also help us grasp overseas research trends."
Only a few years ago, STEM graduate schools at regional private universities faced a survival crisis. In a policy brief released in 2023, the Science and Technology Policy Institute (STEPI) forecast that if the decline in the school-age population continued, the number of STEM master's and doctoral students could fall to less than half of the level at that time by around 2050. Over the long term, it recommended that "graduate school sizes should be optimized in preparation for the possibility that the number of universities capable of stably operating STEM graduate schools will significantly decrease."
However, in a follow-up brief published this March, STEPI revised its forecast, saying, "The number of STEM graduate students exceeded 100,000 in 2025, and accordingly the point of decline will be delayed." This is largely due to the efforts of regional private universities, which actively participated in foreign student support programs run by the government and local governments and established new majors of high interest to overseas students, such as AI, semiconductors, and future automobiles, to attract students. In 2023, the government announced the "Study Korea 300K Project," setting a goal of attracting 300,000 foreign students by 2027 while expanding the recruitment of outstanding talent in STEM fields. In addition, through the Regional Innovation System & Education (RISE), regional universities and local governments are jointly working to attract overseas students. Dongshin University's RISE project team held a study-abroad fair in Vietnam last year, and North Gyeongsang Province is establishing "Gyeongbuk Hakdang," Korean-language education institutions, in places such as Ho Chi Minh City in Vietnam and Uzbekistan, promoting a project to connect them to study and employment at universities within the province.
For regional private universities, foreign students are a realistic means of survival that secures tuition income and maintains graduate school enrollment rates. However, the government's purpose in attracting foreign students is not merely to fill the student numbers of regional universities. A major aim is to utilize the foreign STEM talent cultivated at domestic universities as a human resource to make up for manpower shortages in university laboratories and advanced industries. As securing domestic master's and doctoral students becomes difficult due to the declining school-age population, foreign students serve as an alternative for maintaining the science and technology research base.
Whether attracting foreign students will actually lead to expanding domestic science and technology manpower remains uncertain. It will take several more years to confirm the employment and settlement outcomes of the foreign students who surged in 2025, and the domestic employment of existing graduates has also failed to produce clear results. According to the "2024 Employment Statistics Survey of Higher Education Institution Graduates" released by the Ministry of Education last year, among the 36,271 foreign students who graduated from domestic higher education institutions, 4,993 found domestic employment, or just 13.8%. A total of 15,576, or 42.9% of the whole, ended their stay in Korea after graduation for reasons such as returning to their home countries or the expiration of their residency status.
Insufficient employment linkage between universities and regional companies, along with Korean language ability, employment visas, and a lack of quality jobs in the region, are cited as factors blocking settlement. Lee Hye-sun, a research fellow at the Science and Technology Policy Institute, pointed out, "The policy to expand foreign students is still closer to quantitative recruitment than to settlement as domestic science and technology manpower." She added, "To go beyond the effect of maintaining graduate school sizes and connect this to national science and technology capabilities, we must also prepare a labor market and employment paths where they can work after graduation."
The growing number of foreign students is playing a central role in STEM laboratories, taking on research project execution, experiments, and surveys of overseas papers and cases. A professor at the electrical engineering graduate school of a private university in Daegu said, "With domestic graduate students hard to recruit, foreign students are filling the manpower gaps for carrying out research projects." He added, "Because they broadly gather papers and empirical cases from their home countries, they also help us grasp overseas research trends."
Only a few years ago, STEM graduate schools at regional private universities faced a survival crisis. In a policy brief released in 2023, the Science and Technology Policy Institute (STEPI) forecast that if the decline in the school-age population continued, the number of STEM master's and doctoral students could fall to less than half of the level at that time by around 2050. Over the long term, it recommended that "graduate school sizes should be optimized in preparation for the possibility that the number of universities capable of stably operating STEM graduate schools will significantly decrease."
However, in a follow-up brief published this March, STEPI revised its forecast, saying, "The number of STEM graduate students exceeded 100,000 in 2025, and accordingly the point of decline will be delayed." This is largely due to the efforts of regional private universities, which actively participated in foreign student support programs run by the government and local governments and established new majors of high interest to overseas students, such as AI, semiconductors, and future automobiles, to attract students. In 2023, the government announced the "Study Korea 300K Project," setting a goal of attracting 300,000 foreign students by 2027 while expanding the recruitment of outstanding talent in STEM fields. In addition, through the Regional Innovation System & Education (RISE), regional universities and local governments are jointly working to attract overseas students. Dongshin University's RISE project team held a study-abroad fair in Vietnam last year, and North Gyeongsang Province is establishing "Gyeongbuk Hakdang," Korean-language education institutions, in places such as Ho Chi Minh City in Vietnam and Uzbekistan, promoting a project to connect them to study and employment at universities within the province.
For regional private universities, foreign students are a realistic means of survival that secures tuition income and maintains graduate school enrollment rates. However, the government's purpose in attracting foreign students is not merely to fill the student numbers of regional universities. A major aim is to utilize the foreign STEM talent cultivated at domestic universities as a human resource to make up for manpower shortages in university laboratories and advanced industries. As securing domestic master's and doctoral students becomes difficult due to the declining school-age population, foreign students serve as an alternative for maintaining the science and technology research base.
Whether attracting foreign students will actually lead to expanding domestic science and technology manpower remains uncertain. It will take several more years to confirm the employment and settlement outcomes of the foreign students who surged in 2025, and the domestic employment of existing graduates has also failed to produce clear results. According to the "2024 Employment Statistics Survey of Higher Education Institution Graduates" released by the Ministry of Education last year, among the 36,271 foreign students who graduated from domestic higher education institutions, 4,993 found domestic employment, or just 13.8%. A total of 15,576, or 42.9% of the whole, ended their stay in Korea after graduation for reasons such as returning to their home countries or the expiration of their residency status.
Insufficient employment linkage between universities and regional companies, along with Korean language ability, employment visas, and a lack of quality jobs in the region, are cited as factors blocking settlement. Lee Hye-sun, a research fellow at the Science and Technology Policy Institute, pointed out, "The policy to expand foreign students is still closer to quantitative recruitment than to settlement as domestic science and technology manpower." She added, "To go beyond the effect of maintaining graduate school sizes and connect this to national science and technology capabilities, we must also prepare a labor market and employment paths where they can work after graduation."
