More And More Difficulties For Community And Vocational Colleges In Recruitment

Community and vocational colleges have watched dwindling number of students apply. This time of year, most schools should have been busy with admissions-related works for the school year of 2003. But, community and vocational colleges are experiencing difficulties in recruiting their prospective freshmen. Part of the problem lies in the fact that the total new enrollment at colleges and universities outnumbers the high school graduates from this year.

▽ Current status = Most community and vocational colleges in Seoul and Busan have stopped taking applications. Even if a college succeeded in recruiting applicants enough to fill up its enrollment, the total number of applicants has been reduced by 40-50% from last year.

Especially, the situation is much worse for colleges located in rural areas, which accept applications by the end of February. The majority of those schools have to watch a considerable number of their departments fail to recruit any student at all. For example, a department of a college located in North Chunra Province has recruited only 9 applicants for its 40 enrollment, although 100% of its graduates have found jobs upon graduation.

Colleges and universities in Daegoo City and North Kyungsang Province have the capacity of accommodating 100,000 students in total. This year, however, they have taken only 60,000 applications. Now, they fear what the future may have in store for them.

▽ Reasons = The number of applicants has dwindled continuously from 872,297 in 2001, to 739,129 in 2002 and to 675,759 this year. As a result, the total number of students wanted by colleges and universities exceeds that of the prospective college applicants.

Under this situation, local universities have vigorously waged various promotional strategies to recruit more freshmen, pushing community and vocational colleges more and more up against the wall.

Dean of Admissions Office Kim Young-jin of Kyongbok University opines, "Universities in localities have offered various special admissions programs to recruit more students including vocational high school graduates. That is why colleges have a harder time to recruit students."

For example, the vocational high school graduates who are admitted to regular universities have shot up by 2.4 times from last year`s 483 to 1,159 this year.

▽ Heated competition = A community college in Kwongjoo City is giving incentives to a professor who contributes to recruiting students such as special treatment in promotion and award from the college chancellor.

Another college in North Chunbook Province demands its professors to recruit 20 students each, and threatens to fire any who fails to meet the requirement. Some colleges waive application fees, and others promise to "compensate" those high school teachers who help them secure more students.

College experts explain that the applicant-freshman ratio should be at least 3:1 to fill up the enrollment, since high school graduates can file as many applications as they could, and some students, once admitted to university, do not get enrolled in colleges.

Last year, colleges on the whole had to watch a shortage of 23,000 freshmen. But this year the situation will get worse, leaving many departments empty of students.

Kang Byung-do, the head of the national body representing all the colleges, said, "If community and vocational colleges fail to enhance their competitive edges, they will have to be pushed out of the market. The government should also help them, too."