Due to the rapid decrease in the number of students who enter university, the Ministry of Education(MOE) announced the University Restructuring Plan to trim down the number of students in universities by 160,000 by year 2023. The goals of this plan are to get rid of the dodgy universities by overhauling the nation’s university education system and to remove the ranking of universities. The MOE is planning to carry out the Specialization Project for local universities, which will take 5 years, by using a research grant worth a total 2.031 trillion won. They are also inducing the shutdown of universities that have earned low scores on their evaluation. Additionally, if a university submits the plan to reduce the number of students before, the MOE will give that university bonus points when they select the government educational financing later on. Therefore, universities had to prepare the Specialization Project along with the reduction of the number of students.

Our school’s Specialization Project

  When a university applies for the Specialization Project, the project groups need to be divided into 3 categories, which are University Autonomy, National Support, and Local Strategy. After that, the Business Administration Committee scores and selects the project groups by separating them into Categorical, Regional, and Business.
  The MOE officially announced the Specialization Project this year in February, but Chungbuk National University(CBNU) has already been preparing for it since this January by organizing a task force team(TF Team). CBNU’s TF Team set the valuation basis depending on the competitiveness of the surrounding regional universities, and the team selected the project groups based on the highest performing majors.
  Currently, CBNU submitted a total of nine project groups. These nine project groups are separated into Manpower Development of Local Strategic Industry, Manpower Development of Knowledge Based Society, and Global Development of Talented Individual. Manpower Development of Local Strategic Industry is composed mainly of BT and IT majors that are connected with the local industries. Manpower Development of Knowledge Based Society is a project group that mainly researches on fundamental studies that will be needed in the future. Lastly, Global Development of Talented Individual is a project group to train the foreign students to become globally outstanding individuals and to broaden the exchange between other countries and our school.
  CBNU already had been progressing the Specialization Project by spontaneously choosing specialized majors since 10 years ago. Therefore, 70% of the majors that are involved in the nine selected project groups for this Specialization Project had already been selected from the Specialization Project held by our school in the past.

CBNU’s goal through this specialization project

  CBNU used this specialization project as an opportunity to achieve their goals, which are to rank in the top 50 in Asia and in the top 300 in the World by 2020. CBNU set 3 steps for the Specialization Strategy Promotion and Upbringing Plan to fulfill their goals. The first step is to rank in the top 5 among the national universities, the second step is to rank in the top 12 among all the universities in Korea, and the final step is to rank in the top 50 in Asia. For CBNU to pass the first step, CBNU has to be selected by the MOE as the stronghold of the universities in the Chungcheong provinces.
  CBNU connected the Specialization Project and the Restructuring Plan together by bringing in a competitive system. The competitive system of the Specialization Project and the Restructuring Plan is a system which adds up the scores of the relative evaluations of each major, whether or not they have specialization projects or self-restructuring plans. About CBNU’s direction towards specialization and restructuring, Prof. Kim Hak-yong(Dept. of Biochemistry), who is the leader of the Specialization Project, said, “Since our school set the valuation of the Restructuring Plan based on a competitive system and made it so that no major will feel disadvantaged, there won’t be any problems like other universities are having. Additionally, even if the majors didn’t receive a research grant this time, they will be given another chance to apply next time if they make an effort to gain good scores.”

By Heo Jae-rin
jr34@cbnu.ac.kr