Countermeasures to Prevent from Avoiding Natural Science and Engineering Is in Confusion

Criticisms have arisen that the government countermeasures to solve the avoidance of the natural science by the students has rather increased the confusions and distrust by the scattering of the measures without a coordination among the government departments.

The government held a `science education development committee` composed of the related persons from the Ministry of Education and Human Resources Development, the Ministry of Finance and Economy, the Ministry of Science and Technology, the Ministry of Commerce, Energy and Industry, and the Ministry of Information and Communication to discuss the measures to revitalize the natural science and engineering education.

After the meeting, the Ministry of Science and Technology announced that the government would cancel or reduce the cross application system, which is the major reason of the reduction of the applicants to the natural science and engineering from the application guideline of 2003.

The Ministry also revealed other measures that it is considering such as providing bonus points for the same field applicants, privileges in the military service, incentives for female students, and alleviation of the grades of SAT for the application to the natural science and engineering.

However, the Ministry of Education explained that "we agreed to prepare a general countermeasures by June after adjusting the opinions of the departments about the current situation and the reasons of the avoidance of the students from applying to the natural science and engineering. However, the announcement of the Ministry of Science and Technology in terms of the cancellation of the cross application and the military duty privilege is wrong."

The Ministry of Education commented that "the reduction of the cross application or providing bonus points to the same field applicants are dependant on the decision of universities and the Education Ministry already decided to recommend such measures to the universities for the 2003 admission. The hasty announcement of the measures that are not decided yet as if it is confirmed might bring about more confusions."

Such conflicts among the departments betray the lack of the coordination concerning the dates of the policy implementation and the content of the policy itself between the related departments for the related issues, for example, the military service privilege between the Education Ministry and the Ministry of Defense.

To prevent such confusion, the Ministry of Education was promoted to the Ministry of Education and Human Resource Development to coordinate all the related policies but it has been indicated that even the Human Resources Development Committee composed of the Ministers of the Cabinet established for this purpose is not functioning properly.

With regard to the cross application, the university side criticized that "the selecting methods are to be exclusive to the decision of the universities and therefore the government cannot intervene. It is absolutely dependant on the decision of the universities whether to allow the cross application to attract more qualified students to a particular area that the universities are concentrating to develop."

inchul@donga.com