20 Billion KRW Support Over 2 Years for 5 Private Universities Enhancing Accounting Transparency and Publicness

Ministry of Education Announces '2021 Private School Innovation Support Project'
Applications Must Be Submitted by June 15

Essential Task of Private School Innovation Support Project: 'Ensuring Accounting Transparency'

[Asia Economy Reporter Han Jinju] The Ministry of Education has selected five private four-year universities that practice projects to enhance transparency and publicness, and will support them with 2 billion KRW over two years.

On the 13th, the Ministry of Education announced that starting this year, it will promote the '2021 Private University Innovation Support Project' aimed at increasing transparency and publicness for school corporations and universities operating four-year universities.

The Ministry of Education presents private university innovation tasks to encourage private universities to strengthen transparency and publicness on their own, and provides incentives when universities discover and promote projects independently.

The Ministry of Education disclosed the promotion tasks through the support project announcement. First, the task of 'securing accounting transparency' must be pursued mandatorily. Universities must implement all four core areas of accounting transparency, selecting and promoting two or more tasks per area.

In addition to the mandatory task, universities must select and promote at least two of the seven models presented by the Ministry of Education related to four fields: ▲responsibility in corporation management ▲publicness in corporation management ▲democracy in faculty and staff personnel affairs ▲self-innovation.

The Ministry of Education, viewing financial operation transparency as the top priority for restoring trust in private universities, mandates the pursuit of ‘securing accounting transparency’ and suggests various example tasks in areas such as board operation, faculty and staff personnel, and audits to induce autonomous innovation according to university conditions.

School corporations or universities wishing to apply for the Private University Innovation Support Project can fill out the application form on the Korea Private School Promotion Foundation website and submit it by June 15. To guide and promote the project, the Ministry of Education will hold a ‘visiting project briefing session’ online or offline for two weeks from May 25 to June 4.

Deputy Prime Minister and Minister of Education Yoo Eun-hye said, “The Private University Innovation Support Project is a program where private universities strive independently to secure publicness, the government supports this, and the government institutionalizes and legislates the outcomes derived by universities to strengthen the publicness of private universities. We expect the accounting transparency of private universities, the democracy and responsibility of board operations to improve, and the democratic decision-making culture within campuses to expand significantly.”