|
Seoul National University president Lee Jang-moo said the university will hire around 100 foreign professors this year. Talks are under way to bring in 1995 Nobel Prize winner in chemistry Paul Crutzen and another academic who won the Fields Medal, which is the Nobel equivalent in math.
Out of some 1,700 SNU professors, only 60 -- just 3.5 percent -- are foreigners. One of the reasons SNU is not even ranked among the world's top 50 universities is its lackluster effort to become global. SNU must drastically increase the size of its foreign faculty, not just for the sake of boosting its ranking, but for the sake of improving the quality of education. In a culture where professors of a university are all alumni from that same school, it is impossible to promote an atmosphere of academic criticism and realize transparency in hiring academics. It is also hard to realize a high degree of academic achievement under this culture.
One Korea University professor wrote in an academic journal that foreign professors prepare detailed lecture plans, were meticulous in the selection of texts, valued debate, thoroughly read reports submitted by students, always made time to listen to students, graded them fairly, and placed priority in lectures, viewing them as commitments made to their students. The teaching styles of foreign professors will have a positive impact on Korean professors.
But foreign professors won't flock to Korea simply because Korean universities are hiring. Last year, Tokyo University announced it would raise its number of foreign professors from 250 to 1,300, and the first thing the university did was to build a guest house for them. Following the recommendation of its foreign professors, the Korea Advanced Institute of Science and Technology had restaurants near the school include English translations on their menus. Universities need English-speaking administrative staff in order to make things more convenient for foreign faculty. And the uniform system of wages must change in order to attract talented academics from abroad.
What's most important is a fair and transparent system of hiring foreign professors. Universities need to post invitations for applications in foreign countries and form screening committees that will judge applicants purely on their abilities. If foreign professors are hired based on a transparent system, that will have a ripple effect on the hiring of Korean professors, fixing the inefficiencies, backwardness and lack of transparency in that process.
(englishnews@chosun.com )
|
