Universities Concerned about Confusion Arisen by the Abolishment of NEIS

With the Education Ministry’s announcement of suspending the National Education Information System (NEIS) on May 26, colleges and universities are concerned about possible confusion surrounding the system, saying that they wonder if they will be able to deal with the college entrance exams.

The teachers in charge of school information, who were working on establishing the NEIS database, are also confused.

Some of them even went to their school principals to submit their resignation while others are planning to start a signature-collection drive against the suspension decision of the NEIS.

The Ministry of Education and Human Resources Development said: “The new system will be put in place only for third grade students in high schools so that there won’t be chaos in the college entrance exam.” However, colleges and universities apparently do not trust them.

They think that it is impossible for all high schools to submit students’ records through the NEIS during the examination period because senior educators and principals reacted angrily to the Ministry`s concession.

In particular, when some schools submit some manual data, credibility could be diminished and colleges may need more time and manpower to computerize them.

“We should confirm whether students added some information on their own,” said Sung Tae-je, an admission official at Ewha Woman’s University. “There can be controversies even after the selection, which in turn can deal a blow to students,” he worried.

Universities are concerned that some information teachers plan to walk out, thereby damaging the student’s selection procedure schedule.

The teachers in charge of school information claimed, “The complete return to the present CS (client-server) system except for the third grade will require a lot of time and effort.”

Since the structures of the NEIS and CS are different, schools need a program that has not even been developed. Therefore, the teachers predict that even if the program is developed, a considerable amount of time is required to check errors and data.

At this point, all NEIS data should be outputted and then re-entered to the CS system, requiring additional time and effort.

The CS system was developed in line with the Sixth School Curriculum. Therefore, when it comes to second graders in high school, where in-depth curriculum of the Seventh Curriculum is applied, it is impossible for schools to manage school affairs because they don’t have the CS system.

In particular, classes of commercial and special purpose high schools change according to each subject. The CS system, however, is incapable of reflecting such movement. Teachers say that the development of the system that can reflect the Seventh Curriculum will take at least six months.

Unlike the NEIS, the CS system is run by a UNIX server and individual schools are required to have a server manager. Nonetheless, schools do not have server experts familiar with the UNIX system.

Even if there are some teachers who have knowledge of the server, when they transfer to other schools, the school would face the same problems again.

The CS system was last upgraded in May last year. The contract with relevant companies already expired last May due to preparations for transition to the NEIS. Therefore, if an error takes place, there is no way to deal with it.

At present, 10,730 elementary, middle, and high schools are implementing the NEIS while 350 of them have already abolished the CS system.

Seong-Chul Hong Jin-Suk Huh sungchul@donga.com jameshuh@donga.com