Establish Graduate Schools Jointly Run by Universities and Companies

Graduate schools specialized to foster technical experts serving corporations’ needs will be established and jointly run by universities and corporations. In addition, universities in cooperation with companies will form a conference and make decisions on how to keep the balance of supply and demand for highly skilled technical manpower in the conference.

A high-ranking government official said on Tuesday that the government will revise its manpower policy to strengthen cooperation between companies and schools in an effort to address the discrepancy between supply and demand for a technical workforce. The government will make a plan to implement this agenda and execute it as early as March after holding a public hearing.

According to the plan, master and doctorate programs teaching 60 next-generation technologies will be set up gradually by 2008 and jointly run by schools and companies.

The government and industries will finance each science and technology major with more than one billion won each year. More than 30 percent of the faculty members will be taken from work fields. This year will see about five to 10 master and doctorate programs set up, and the total of 60 programs will be completely open to the public by the year 2008. Each course is expected to produce around 30 to 50 experts, adding up 2,000 personnel in total.

Potential sectors leading the future growth include smart cars, intelligent robots, next-generation batteries, displays, and next-generation semiconductors. The government will provide graduate schools with financial support once courses are established.

The growing discrepancy between supply and demand for technical workers made the government take measures to consolidate cooperation between corporations and schools. Now, job seekers with science and technology undergraduate degrees are oversupplied, while master and doctorate degree holders are expected to be undersupplied by 8310 people from 2006.

While 76.2 percent of research and development activities are funded by companies, 72.6 percent of researchers with doctorate degrees work at universities, forming another factor to hamper the technology developments.

To deal with such problems, the government will establish industry-university cooperation conferences for electronics, mechanical engineering, and e-business sectors. In the conferences, corporations and schools will try to forecast demands for the technology workforce and make the best effort to develop educational and training programs for them.

Eun-Woo Lee libra@donga.com