[Opinion] Foreigner Named University President

After the city states of Greece perished and Rome obtained supremacy, the Greeks reigned for a long time as a synonym for intelligence. According to their custom, the nobles of Rome left their children in the educational care of Greek teachers. The Greeks have assumed almost every responsibility of knowledge instruction everywhere in the Mediterranean Sea region. Though those examples established the Greeks’ popular greatness, we should consider the Rome that utilized Greek intelligence pertinently to conquer the ancient world. In contrast to the fact that Greece went to ruin due to their lack of solidarity regardless of how brilliant their knowledge was, Rome established their great empire based on their openness and catholicity.

▷ Professor Robert Laughlin from the United States, who awarded the Nobel Prize back in 1998, has been appointed to the presidency of the Korea Advanced Institute of Science and Technology (KAIST), showing a gradual tendency of alteration in our academic university world. So far, the universities have avoided appointing outsiders as their presidents, to say nothing of foreigners. Except KAIST, Sung Kyun Kwan University (SKKU) has nominated Robert Klemkosky from the Indiana State University as their president of their newly-opening MBA course this September. The Seoul School of Integrated Sciences and Technologies (aSSIST) has also invited David Smith, who used to be the vice president of Harvard University’s law school, as their president. People are interested about how quickly they can adapt to domestic universities and bring about fruitful outcomes.

▷ However, there are many aspects of anxiety. The culture of Korean universities will be unfamiliar to the foreign presidents of universities. The restraints against the universities are much stronger than those of universities overseas. It cannot be denied that there still exist exclusionisms against foreigners. Though the brand-new foreign president of KAIST who intended to visit Korea would have thoroughly considered these facts in advance, the gap should be filled in by the university itself. And like the example of soccer’s Gus Hiddink, universities should give the utmost support and confidence to them.

▷ In order to increase the competitiveness of universities in short term, know-how of university management has to be introduced from the outside. Foreign presidents can be free of the stereotypes created by personal relationships and bonds of academic background, which have been continuously regarded as problems. Though the appointment is an “experiment” that has a possibility of failure, the culture of universities can be greatly altered if it succeeds. Globalization and improvement of universities are urgently necessary for reducing the exorbitant outflow of money to overseas under the name of expenditure for overseas studying. In order to do this, the most important thing for our universities might be to show open-hearted attitudes just like the Romans did by embracing the Greeks, who were a cut above in terms of intelligence.

Editorialist Hong Chan-sik, chansik@donga.com