200,000 IT Engineers to be Produced for Next 5 Years

The student quota of Information Technology (IT) related department in the Seoul Metropolitan Area schools will be increased by more than 500. To nurture the high-quality researchers, the Media Lab Asia, a counterpart of MIT Media Lab, will be established in the Graduate School of Information and Communication Technology.

Ministry of Information and Communication (MIC) reported the `Comprehensive Plan on Manpower Nurturing` a report to construct the information-knowledge-based-country, `E-Korea`, to President Kim Dae-Jung on 21st at the explanation session for hiring IT engineers, which was held at the Korea Science and Technology Center. The MIC plans to rear more than 200,000 IT engineers with a budget of 0.1 billion won in next 5 years. In Korea, there was a shortage of 40,000 IT engineers last year, and there will be another shortage of 140,000 by 2005.

Consequently, they have decided to bring up 50,000 engineers this year spending a budget of 431.1 billion won including contribution by the IMT-2000 time-division-multiple-access-system manufacturers. Increase of the student quota in IT related departments will also be allowed. To help establish a software-related department and a graduate school program, they have decided to provide a subsidy of 1.5 billion won and 2 billion won each for two years.

If the IT related departments alter their curriculum to the subjects needed by the industry, 0.15 billion won of expense will be supplied to replace equipments and to hire professors. They also have decided to construct an IT prodigy nurturing system in which high school, college, and graduate school are directly and efficiently connected. They will give official licenses for cyber institutes to give regular degrees from 2003 intensifying the IT related cyber education system.

freewill@donga.com