December 5, 2014
Good afternoon, respected President Atsushi Seike and the Senate of Keio University, Dean Shinsuke Nakamura of the Faculty of Economics, and other distinguished guests. I am deeply honored to receive an honorary Doctorate of Economics from Keio University today. I accept it with a great sense of responsibility and gratitude. I would like to thank all of you here for an academic recognition I hold so closely to my heartmy sincere gratitude to all honored guests who have joined us to grace today’s commencement ceremony. Above all, my heartiest congratulations are sent out to everyone who will be graduating today with their well-deserved undergraduate, graduate and doctorate degrees, as well as their beloved family members and friends.
Receiving Keio University’s honorary doctorate is not just a tribute to me as an individual. It is also a token of inspiration for our two universities’ combined accomplishments, and a symbol of hope for us to strengthen and develop ties as longstanding partners. Since the signing of our exchange agreement in 1970, our partnership has grown based on trust and respect. In 2012, as I was appointed President, we set a foundation for future cooperation by signing a strategic partnership to cooperate not only in student exchange, but also in research, faculty exchange, and international institutions. Today, we work even more closely together as key partners in the 3-Campus Consortium for Comparative East Asian Studies.
I hope today’s ceremony will be a place where my challenges and dreams as university president can be shared with fellow friends and colleagues. I would like to share my thoughts on the future of higher education through the lens of Yonsei’s example, or a Yonsei paradigm.
Universities’ Historical Change
To understand the future of our universities, we must first consider the past. The university system that we know today dates back to the Middle Ages. Medieval universities began as unions of academic, medical, economic and social, as well as political, fields. As universities evolved further, educational unions of students and professors, called guilds, gained more strength and resources to form complete universities. The universities that began as guilds were not only given complete autonomy to be in charge of educating the clergy, but they also laid the foundations for the scientific development that would produce such outstanding scientists as Galileo Galilei.
In the modern era, more universities were built not only for the education and training of priests, but for educating the youth to be political and social leaders as well as elite scholars. “Contemplative freedom” of universities was emphasized as the universities transformed into their modern-day form. They became “comprehensive research universities for academic and scientific research.”
As we entered the industrial era, specialized graduate schools were created to produce specialists in each field. Universities were thought of as places that embraced all social classes, as they produced scholarly researchers and elite professionals. These researchers and professionals played a vital role in breaking down barriers of social classes and forming a modern civil society. Such a society required a new paradigm from the world of higher education and academia. As a result, the “investigation on matter, instead of the investigation on words” spread rapidly with Europe at its center. Higher education stressed equality and universality, as well as social sciences, natural sciences and applied sciences. The students who emerged from such educational systems made immense contributions to the development of industrial society.
In today’s industrial society, as higher education became popularized, universities grew in size and diversified in teaching content as they moved away from being medieval or pre-modern universities to becoming “pluralistic universities.” Doors have been opened wider to embrace a broader target student group, and the curriculum, too, has become more differentiated and specialized.
As a result, society rapidly developed into an advanced information technology society. Within this knowledge-based society and economy, with information as a core resource, knowledge creation and dissemination from universities has become more important than ever before. Universities pave the way for change in an information society as they create new knowledge through research and expand on such knowledge through education. It is an important mission for universities to strive to preserve a human touch in a fast-growing knowledge-based society.
Stanford University is one example of how to adapt successfully to our new environment. The October 2012 report entitled “Stanford University’s Economic Impact via Innovation and Entrepreneurship” highlights the fact that about 40,000 active companies can trace their roots to Stanford. These companies have created 5.4 million jobs and generated annual world revenues of $2.7 trillion. This astonishing figure is more than double that of South Korea’s GDP. Stanford President John L. Hennessy explained that the findings are a tribute to the successful entrepreneurial legacy of Stanford, in addition to its creative and innovative teaching traditions.
The accomplishments of Asian universities are no less impressive. Korea’s universities were established about 30 years after Keio University’s founding, near the end of the 19th century. Yet within the 130 years of their short history, they were critical in achieving national independence, leading democratization and industrialization, and taking on other social responsibilities. Until now, Korea’s universities have contributed to social development by producing a talented labor force needed for an industrial society. Behind the remarkable industrial developments of the construction industry in the 1970s, the automobile industry in the 1980s, the electronics industry in the 1990s, and the information and communications technology (ICT) industry in the 2000s, lies Korea’s astonishing fervor for education.
In both qualitative and quantitative measures, universities in Korea have contributed to expanding a human resource base for the purpose of social and industrial development. From 29 universities and 16,000 students in 1945, Korea have grown to 358 universities and 3.32 million students in 2013. Over the past 70 years, universities grew 12 fold, and there are 200 times as many students. Korean universities are increasingly highly regarded on the international scene: in the recent QS World University Rankings, six Korean universities, including Seoul National University and Yonsei University, were ranked within the top 200 worldwide.
The Future of Higher Education
As we can feel on a daily basis, the world is rapidly transforming into a knowledge-based society and knowledge-based economy. Rapidly advancing and highly specialized knowledge is becoming the essential element of every country’s competitive growth and wealth creation. The role of the university becomes more important than ever, as the university creates and expands knowledge which these economies rely upon. The change in the knowledge information society is driven by universities, which creates new knowledge through research and expands knowledge by teaching. Universities are the source of knowledge and innovation.
Can Korea’s universities respond to the demands of such a future society? Domestic and external circumstances do not seem to be in favor of Korean universities. The largest change begins with the population structure. Korea’s combined birth rate rapidly declined from 4.53 in 1970 to 1.57 in 1990 and was as low as 1.23 in 2010. Korea now has the lowest birthrate in the world. Consequently, students of university age between 18 and 21 are also rapidly declining. According to a recent estimate by Statistics Korea, the university-aged population declined from 3.27 million to 2.8 million between 2010 and 2013. By 2025, it is projected to fall to 1.78 million, only about 60% of our current university-aged population.
Economic changes are also speeding Korean universities’ contraction. The global recession and rising youth unemployment has led to declining university enrollment rates. Until 2008, Korean high school graduates were known to have one of the highest college entrance rates in the world at 83.9%. In 2013, such figures showed an abrupt drop to 70.7%, recording a 10% decline within just five years. The decline of the university age population compounded with the falling university entrance rate prompted the Korean government reduced the entrance quota for universities. In January 2014, the Korean government announced an aggressive entrance quota restructuring policy that would reduce the entrance quota by 160,000 students by 2022.
Since the 2008 global financial crisis, the government’s role in the economy and society has been shifting. A poor economy creates a more interventionist government. Along with an increasing role in job creation and welfare policies, governments are increasingly regulating higher education. The Korean government in particular, is regulating tuition and promoting restructuring more so than ever.
Korea’s domestic political dynamics are driving universities into an even more difficult situation. The “half price tuition” policy is popularly used in political campaigns as a vote-getter. But most private universities in Korea rely heavily on tuition as their main source of income. Combined with declining university entrance rates, this “half price tuition” policy is driving many private universities into financial trouble. Private universities account for around 80% of Korea’s higher education institutions; therefore, troubles faced by private universities can spread easily to the higher education system as a whole.
Aside from domestic circumstances, global competition is also becoming fiercer. Globally, higher education has already entered an age of so-called “unlimited competition.” Developed countries experienced declining university-age populations over a decade ago, leading many universities to seek students from around the world. Information technology is also helping open up education across borders. Students are able to attend world-class lectures through Massive Open Online Courses (or MOOCs). Since limits of time and space no longer apply, universities lacking in global competitiveness will surely fall behind.
The Yonsei Paradigm and the Future of University Education
What action should Yonsei University take in the face of these 21st century challenges? I believe that we should remain faithful to the basics, especially during these difficult times. We will strive for excellence in education and research, while providing the foundation for the creation, expansion and application of knowledge in a creative economy. The World Bank defines the basic elements of a good university as having 1) outstanding teaching faculty, research teams, and students, 2) sound educational governance in educational systems and policy, and 3) a firm financial foundation.
Similarly, the Yonsei paradigm to lead the 21st century should also be about going back to the basics. We must remain true to the fundamentals of higher education while accepting and adapting to change. The main aspects of the Yonsei paradigm are focused on promoting education and research through our Residential College system, interdisciplinary education, research competitiveness, and university autonomy.
Residential College System
One of the first steps of the Yonsei paradigm was providing residential education to our students. When considering common elements in the world’s top 30 universities, most have a strong residential college program. The world’s most prestigious schools such as the University of Oxford and the University of Cambridge in the UK, as well as Ivy League universities in the U.S., are based upon a residential college system. For the first time in Korea, Yonsei launched an RC system at our Wonju campus in 2007 to provide “holistic education” to students. The system was an ideal fit for the campus environment and the quiet setting of the Wonju area, and was well-received by students and faculty.
Based on this success case, Yonsei established a plan to pilot the RC program at our new International Campus in Incheon. The initial development plans faced many challenges: 1) when first contracted in 2006, the campus grounds were not reclaimed from the ocean yet and were still part seawater, 2) few faculty and students wished to leave Seoul, and 3) students were reluctant to live far away from home on an unknown campus.
Despite these challenges, the Residential Campus program was successfully piloted at our International Campus beginning in 2011, with around 400 students in residence, and as of this year, we have over 4,000 students there including all Yonsei freshmen. Our Residential College program has revolutionized Korean higher education, since most Korean universities are commuter campuses. Through the RC program, based upon a creative community that combines living and learning, Yonsei has created the most advanced environment to foster well-rounded leaders to serve the future of this society. The Residential College program believes in “holistic education,” in which students are educated as “whole” individuals. This holistic education program integrates the intellectual, moral, and spiritual aspects of education, pioneering a model of internationalized comprehensive education within Korea.
The positive effects of the RC system on educational capacity have been demonstrated in various indexes. More than 2,400 people have visited Yonsei from both Korea and abroad to understand our RC model implemented in Songdo. Throughout the 2015 academic year admissions season, more outstanding students than ever before/ chose Yonsei and its RC system. By completing the RC teaching system at the International Campus, together with the Wonju Campus, all of Yonsei’s campuses now offer RC education. The RC education system is based on Yonsei’s values of “truth and freedom” to foster global talents to meet social responsibilities.
Interdisciplinary Education
Second, Yonsei University is leading change in Asia’s higher education through interdisciplinary education, or “IE”. IE is gaining momentum as a keyword because our complex, information-rich society requires a flexible thinking and an ability to adapt to new input that depends upon knowledge across disciplines and an ability to process various different kinds of information.
The OECD accounted for the rise in interdisciplinary education to five factors: ① the development of science which led to the creation of new fields of knowledge and attempts to define elements common to disciplines ② student demand for knowledge that was applicable in “reality” ③ problems of university operation or even administration ④ vocational and professional training requirements by industry or job market ⑤ the original social demand where certain needs and new subjects cannot be contained within a single disciplinary frame, such as environmental research.
These demands were felt in Korea and in Asia as well and Yonsei was among the first in the region to respond and develop IE programs. Of course, interdisciplinarity poses challenges for universities because of the department-based nature of existing faculty and programs. Faculty and sometimes students can be resistant to programs that are unfamiliar, or that change existing patterns of funding, research, or teaching. Yonsei is striving to break down these barriers and implement true interdisciplinarity.
One of the ways in which Yonsei is promoting interdisciplinary education is through the liberal arts, which by nature promotes critical thinking and emphasizes tools over content, while deemphasizing majors or fields of study. Yonsei University launched Underwood International College as an elite liberal arts college within Asia ten years ago, when I was serving as the Vice President for Academic Affairs. Underwood International College is distinctive in that, rather than segregating professors into separate departments, it encourages intellectual exchange by bringing together scholars and students from different fields. UIC currently offers 16 majors ranging from humanities, social sciences, arts, IT, engineering and science, with new innovative interdisciplinary majors added in 2012 and 2014.
In addition, another successful IE program at the graduate level is the Graduate School of Information, which was established in 2000 to provide a multidisciplinary graduate education for the application of Information and Communications Technology (ICT) with a wide spectrum of academic fields, including engineering, liberal arts, business, economics, and social sciences. Our International Campus also houses the School of Integrated Technology, which focuses on four main areas of research: Computation & Communications, Seamless Transportation, Smart Living, and Medical Systems. Supported by the Korean government, industry partners, and Yonsei, this innovative undergraduate program aims to train future leaders in smart technology, ICT, energy and environment.
In order to maximize interdisciplinary education and research opportunities at Yonsei, we are actively strengthening networks, communication and planning among our Sinchon, Wonju and Songdo campuses and the Yonsei University Health System. In initiatives ranging from greater information sharing to collective workshops, we hope to increase inter-campus collaboration and better facilitate the use of resources across campuses. Last year, Yonsei established ICONS (Institute of Convergence Sciences), which consolidated 38 existing research centers on all four campuses and provided an incentive for the formation of interdisciplinary research terms drawing on faculty from diverse fields. ICONS promotes creative and innovative convergence research, while encouraging sustainable development in each of the individual research centers.
Research Competitiveness
Third, the Yonsei paradigm is about propelling and attaining research excellence. Yonsei is facing a critical period within which strengthening research capacity is a necessity. Striving for excellence in research is one of the most important basic missions as a prestigious university, without considering competition against other universities.
I admit that there are many challenges to increasing our research capacities, as research results depend heavily on the performance of individual faculty members. Professors may feel less compelled to achieve high standards of research competitiveness after receiving tenure. At Yonsei, we currently have about 4,800 faculty members, including 2,000 full-time faculty members, and it is not easy to increase research results per faculty member. In addition, it is difficult for faculty to make great contributions to research while undertaking administrative and social responsibilities. As President, I must constantly address the issue of creating and maintaining a supportive environment that responds to the needs and potential of our research competitiveness.
Yonsei will continue to improve the system to intensify our research capacity, starting with expanding our research funding in basic research areas, as well as other areas such as human resources, compensation, research assistance and interdisciplinary research. We have also put in place a strengthened research incentive system for tenured faculty, in addition to special appointments of emeritus professors and global scholars. To vitalize interdisciplinary research, we are not only allowing more professors to hold concurrent positions at different faculties, but also lowering the barriers between different programs, colleges and campuses. Yonsei will also utilize our high-tech campus environment to vitalize an internal research ecosystem and provide the best opportunities to maximize research capabilities. In addition, we will secure large-scaled funding and grants to support research initiatives and projects.
University Autonomy
Lastly, the Yonsei paradigm is about securing the necessary autonomy and financial footing to gain global competitiveness. Standardized regulations that stem from government policies in Korea and Japan do not consider each university’s unique qualities. Already, concern is voiced about a race-to-the-bottom downward standardization of universities, as globally-competing universities are bound by current government regulations.
Education is a field that grows based on market mechanisms, where fewer investments lead to lower quality. What we can be doing is creating a positive educational environment and increasing programs to attract international students. However, if we continue to work under standardized regulations and pressure to lower tuition, we will see more Korean students leaving the country in pursuit of higher education abroad. Standardized regulations will diminish our universities’ global competitiveness.
As the President of Yonsei University, I have proposed the “independent private university” model as a solution. The government should ease regulations for outstanding universities and allow more autonomy. Independent private universities are not only about maximizing the school’s autonomy. Yonsei University is already autonomously responding to social demands by engaging more students from low-income families, making sure that higher education still can act as a bridge for class mobility. In the future, we will continue to fulfill our social responsibilities by enhancing administrative transparency and taking care of marginalized students through special admissions and tuition reduction. We will work towards creating a virtuous cycle where our university’s world-class research and education will foster globally-competitive talent, contributing to an increase in national competitiveness; we can also expand learning opportunities for marginalized students to ease social conflict and aid social integration and advancement, which can then lead back to improvement and development in university autonomy.
As Korea’s oldest and largest private university, Yonsei has upheld its tradition of excellence while positioning itself as Korea’s most forward-looking and liberal institution of higher education. Throughout its history, Yonsei has presented new paradigms in higher education and continues to make strides in our mission fields of quality education, cutting-edge research, premier patient care, and community service. Yonsei will emphasize world-class education based on principle of the 4 C’s: Communication, Creativity, Convergence, and Cultural Diversity, and continue to strengthen its research competitiveness. The Yonsei University Health System will strive to be the leader in the industrialization and globalization of medicine in Northeast Asia. Finally, Yonsei will continue to contribute to the community through volunteer programs such as providing leadership training and full scholarships.
Our current Yonsei paradigm, of course, is not a fixed one. As in the past, I will continue to develop the Yonsei model through continuous learning and communication. The support of our key partner, Keio University will be as important as ever during this process, and it is my sincere wish to further expand our cooperative relationship with President Seike and our friends at Keio University in the years to come.
Once again, I would like to express my heartfelt gratitude to Keio University for conferring this honorary Doctorate of Economics and also to our distinguished guests for your attention. Thank you.