Committee Searches For Methods To Improve Education

A new plan which gives tax reduction benefit to companies that contribute money to financially dwindling private universities is introduced. The plan also includes an issue that increases the education budget to 5 percent of the gross domestic product (GDP) by 2003.

The plan also gives universities more independent right to select their students, to execute the school affairs, and to determine the amount of tuition and fees.

The Education and Human Resource Policy Committee (Chair Bae Mu-Gi, president of Ulsan University), a Presidential advisory group, submitted the ` Report on National Human Resource Development Policy` that includes above contents to President Kim Dae-Jung yesterday.

To strengthen the foundation of the public education, to make the university as a center for creating knowledge and professional human resources, to make enterprises as continuing education centers, to nurture the intellectual employees, and to maximize the development of female human resources are main subjects chosen by the committee.

▲ University’s financial difficulty and right to select students = Although the donation based admission system is needed to solve the financial difficulty of universities, because the social agreement has not yet been made, to boost the donation culture, the committee recommended the president to give tax reduction for companies that contribute universities.

The committee also suggested to revise the current special tax limitation law to recognizes 100 percent of the income as operating expenses and to eliminate the statute of limitation. The current special tax limitation law recognizes 50 percent of the income as the operating expenses until 2003.

It also recommended the government to find a method to give universities more expanded and independent right to select students although the government keeps providing the preparation materials for the College Scholastic Ability Test (CSAT). The committee requested the government to let universities determine the tuition and fees.

▲ Strengthening of the public education = To make the public education more substantial, the committee asked for the government to increase the education budget of current 4.6 percent of GDP to 5 percent by 2003 and to cut the ratio of teacher to student in a class from current 1/23 to 1/20.

To build up the education for prodigies, the committee called for the government to help gradual establishment of the prodigy classes, prodigy schools, and prodigy educational institutions. It also requested a system in which different ministries such as Ministry of Education and Human Resources (MEHR), Ministry of Science and Technology, and Ministry of Culture and Tourism to plan for their own strategy for prodigy education based on their own business boundary.

▲ Preparing of the foundation for continuing education = To lead companies to endeavor for development of human resources, they suggested to introduce the `recognition system for superior company on human resource development`. The committee also requested a plan that increases the supporting costs of consulting, education, and training for participating companies. And to create an atmosphere for continuing education, they recommended the `individual study account system` in which the individual, the company, and the government support the studying cost separately.

▲ Plan to utilize the female human resources = The committee requested the government to support the excellent female engineering students to increase recruitment of the female human resources. If a university opens new programs for the female engineering students, more financial support can be granted by the government. It was also presented that a priority can be given to a company that does not discriminate sexual orientation when the government chooses a supplier. They also urged the government to invest more for child-care facilities and to establish child-care facilities in public organizations.

▲ Empty policy = The plans presented by the education reform committee and the new education community committee were evaluated as empty policies in which the policies have been merely repeated without practical plans. Especially, there were many different opinions even in the committee itself on the concept of the human resource. And since there were many overlapped parts with the MEHR’s business, it was hard to find a cooperative mood making the promotion of the policy challenging.

Lee In-Chul inchul@donga.com