Half of College Instructors Are Part-Time

The domestic universities have been more dependent upon the part-time lecturers than last year.

The Korean Council For University Education (KCUE) released the investigation result on the instructor composition of the nation`s 180 universities that the part-time lecturers (56,412) constituted almost the half of the total college instructors (113,461). The ratio of the part-time lecturers increased by 11.3 percent point to 49.7 percent from last year`s 38.4 percent.

While the total instructors increased by 33,964, 42.7 percent of last year`s 79,497, the part-time lecturers increased by 25,865, 76.2 percent of last year`s 30,547. This shows that the universities have concentrated on increasing the cheaper part-time lecturers.

As of April this year, the college instructors were comprised of ▲ tenured professors 45,652 (40.2 percent), ▲ concurrent professors 5,823 (5.1 percent), ▲ non-tenured instructors 4,456 (3.9 percent), ▲ visiting scholars 1,118 (0.98 percent), following the part-time instructors.

The tenured professors increased by 582 from last year`s 45,070, but its ratio fell down greatly to 40.2 percent from 56.7 percent.

Especially, the national universities of technology and the private universities marked the highest dependency on the part-time lecturers. The part-time lecturers occupied 59.7 percent of total instructors (3,568) in national universities of technology and 50.5 percent of total instructors (81,143) in the private universities. The ratios of the national universities and the private universities of technology were 46.3 percent and 45.4 percent respectively.

An official of the Ministry of Education and Human Resources Development said, ``The ministry will improve the level of university education by establishing the plan to switch the part-time lecturers to the full-time lecturers and to raise the salary.``

parky@donga.com