The government on Tuesday announced the criteria for the nationwide college evaluation next year, which will be used for Korea’s upcoming reform of higher education institutes.

The new assessment will consider a range of variables to measure the value of education provided by each institute, the Education Ministry said at a public hearing held at Hanbat National University.

The move marks a shift from past reviews, when officials merely compared the numbers considered important for assessing the quality of education, such as the employment rate of graduates and number of workers.

The major areas of evaluation include long-term plans, staff, facilities, fiscal soundness, curriculums, academic administration, student support services such as counseling and scholarships, employment rates of graduates and student recruitment, satisfaction of people using the educational services, and contributions to society.

Of the 38 criteria, only two ― the number of teachers and full-time workers ― involve simple comparisons of numbers. For the rest, a group of experts will confer to determine which of the five grades each college should get, taking into account the numbers as well as other variables.

For example, if a college has a low employment rate because there are less businesses in the area, the lack of firms will be factored into the evaluation.

After hearing feedback from education circles, the evaluation criteria will be finalized by early November and colleges will kick off the self-evaluation by mid-November. The official assessment will take place next year.

The results of the assessment will be used to sort all Korean universities into five categories, and all but the top-ranked universities will be forced to cut their places for new students. A separate evaluation will be held for two-year colleges, and the government plans to cut a total of 160,000 openings by the end of 2022.

Colleges welcomed the ministry’s “quality over quantity” approach, but raised questions over whether the evaluation will be conducted fairly.

“It will likely be about who can lobby the best. Once the members of the evaluation committee are announced, there will be a lot of phone calls,” said an official from a university located in North Jeolla Province.

“There will be a rush among college staff to pull strings in order to bump up their scores,” said a staff member of a Seoul-based university. “Although I cannot be sure yet, as so little has been revealed about the actual plan.”

The lack of details concerning the new evaluation indices is also an issue, experts point out.

“It is definitely possible for the government to focus on quality rather than quantity, but it is hard to tell whether they will succeed as they did not reveal the ratio of objective and subjective evaluations,” said Lee Su-yeon from the Korea Higher Education Research Institute.

An official from the Education Ministry said that it has not yet been determined how many points will be allocated to the quantitative and qualitative sector of each index.

In addition, Lee pointed out that if much of the evaluations are conducted via subjective opinions of the evaluation committee, colleges are bound to raise questions about fairness. Even when all the assessments are carried out only through comparing numbers, some colleges still complain, she pointed out.

By Yoon Min-sik (minsikyoon@heraldcorp.com)