Lower-than-expected tuition fee reductions anger students

Only half of South Korea’s universities have met an end of January deadline to notify the authorities of their tuition fee levels for 2012, with the majority falling far short of the 15% fee reductions asked for by the government. The lower-than-expected fee reductions have prompted fears of renewed student protests.

Only 186 universities and colleges, or 55% of South Korea’s 337 institutions, had notified the Korea Student Aid foundation by the 27 January deadline, the Korea Student Aid Foundation said.

On 19 January the foundation said that of the 110 institutions that had announced their plans by that date, only two would reduce fees by more than 5% while approximately one in six institutions would lower fees by 3% to 5%.

The Association of Korean University Students said this week that the recently announced fee reductions were unacceptable and that it would ensure tuition fees were a prominent campaign issue in the April general election.

It said it would call on students to vote for national assembly candidates who push for the 50% tuition fee cut students have been demanding.

Cuts of 50% in tuition fees received added impetus this month when the mayor of Seoul, Park Won-Soon, ordered the city authorities to halve the fees at Seoul’s municipal university, in line with his own election pledge.

Although a 5% reduction is what the university presidents’ organisation, the Korean Council for University Education, had said was realistic, it is well below the 15% fee reduction promised by the government for this year after major student protests in May and June last year, the foundation said.

The government had promised it would cut fees in stages, reducing them by 30% by 2014, after students demanded a 50% fee reduction.

The government’s 15% reduction target for 2012 was backed by the Board of Audit and Inspection last year after an investigation into the financial management of 113 universities.

The BAI said that fees could be cut on average by 15% if irregularities and ‘accounting tricks’ were removed as some universities inflated their expenditure estimates in order to justify higher fees.

It said institutions, public and private alike, had habitually manipulated their accounts over the past five years to justify steep rises in tuition expenses, with creative accounting producing some 655.2 billion won (US$580 million) in “inappropriate income” over the last five years, amounting to some 18.7 million won (US$16.6 million) in extra fee income on average each year.

According to some student groups, universities have also been boosting their cash reserves in advance of the fee announcements.

Students have also said they will launch a campaign for public universities to refund so-called ‘student support fees’ after the Seoul central district court ruled last week that there was no legal basis for such levies – amounting to 85% of revenues from tuition fees – to be included in tuition fee levels. Most of the ‘support fee’ income is used for capital costs and expansion of buildings and facilities.

The court ordered eight public institutions to repay 100,000 won to each of the 4,219 students who had brought the action against ‘support fees’

If the ruling is upheld by the supreme court, public institutions will have to repay some 13 trillion won to students and alumni.

In November the government also announced that 1.5 trillion won (US$1.3 billion) would be set aside in the 2012 budget for measures to reduce the heavy tuition fees burden on students, including a national scholarship scheme for students from low-income families, decreasing their tuition fees by around 22%.

Universities that did not reduce fees would not be able to benefit from the new scholarship scheme, the government said.

A number of universities have protested that government pressure on fees has violated their financial autonomy.

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