[Editorial] National Budget Goes the Wrong Way

A few days ago, Suh Nam-pyo, president of Korea Advanced Institute of Science and Technology (KAIST), appealed to the governmental authority, saying, “Please allow us to borrow 100 billion won from the banks as it will be an important investment in developing KAIST into the foremost advanced science and technology school in the world.” In fact, having a certain level of research facilities and a balanced number of professors are prerequisites in achieving a competitive power to becoming a world-renowned university. Because of this, Suh has made a plan to establish a research center in Oracle, the world’s largest software company, and increase the number of professors by borrowing money from banks. However, the directors of the school’s board, representing the government authority, oppose this plan.

KAIST is a government-financed educational institution and was established with the aim of developing the model of research-oriented universities and nurturing highly qualified scientists and engineers for national development. Since KAIST was established with a government donation, it has to obtain an approval from the Ministry of Science and Technology and the board of directors when borrowing money from banks. Four directors representing the government authority from the board objected to the plan, saying, “There is no precedent.” It is nonsense to say that we should give up an important national mission because there is no precedent. This is an example showing the evil practice of rigid bureaucracy. It is paradoxical that while the government stressed the importance of schools’ investment for profits and the benefits of debt-financed operation when it encouraged national universities to transform themselves into corporations, it now disapproves such practice to KAIST which has already been transformed into a corporation.

As Suh stressed in an interview with the Dong-A Ilbo last month, in order to surely meet the needs of all nations in 10 or 20 years, we should make an aggressive investment in fostering scientific technology and nurturing qualified scientific human resources no matter the risk. However, the government has squandered the substantial national budget on less urgent matters. For example, this year’s national budget assigned to the Botanic Committee is as much as 235.2 billion won. Also, it spent a whopping 60 trillion won as compensations to people who lost their private land due to the national balanced development project. In addition, to support its project for the judgment of past wrong-doings, the government spent 178.2 billion won last year and assigned 351.7 billion won for victims’ compensation this year.

While the government is ignoring calls for investment in future technology development and the education of scientists, it is wasting hundreds of billions won of the people’s tax on projects that are nothing but politically-oriented events and political rhetoric. It is very frustrating that this government is now calling for revolution, reform, and a future-oriented mind. The Ministry of Science and Technology announced a “revolutionary blueprint project” last week saying, “For the revolution of the engineering education, we will set up revolutionary engineering education centers in 50 universities nationwide. Of course it is important to have a balanced development in engineering education. However, we are living in a world where one highly qualified scientist can feed tens of thousands of people. If we continue stressing the importance of equality in a technology and science sector, we can hardly see such scientist making a contribution to our society.”