Jang Je-guk, President of Dongseo University, is discussing strategies for the university's survival in an interview marking the 30th anniversary of its founding. Photo by Hwang Doo-yeol bsb03296@
[Asia Economy Yeongnam Reporting Headquarters reporters Kim Yong-woo and Hwang Doo-yeol] “President, thanks to you!” A passenger sitting next to Dongseo University President Jang Je-guk on a plane a few months ago was one of the graduates who remained in his memory.
“He was a physical education student who suddenly insisted on doing the Parrot Project and begged to be sent to the U.S., so we created a new customized overseas semester program and sent him off to California. Now, he is running a nationwide franchise business of parrot shops.”
President Jang knew many successful alumni by heart.
“A student whose TOEIC score was the same as his shoe size, 260, is now working as an English interpreter at a famous American company,” he said. He also proudly mentioned, “A student who was always playing with a yo-yo on campus has become a yo-yo expert and even appeared on the TV program ‘Unbelievable Stories’.”
President Jang Je-guk said, “With the belief that there are no dropouts in the world, if we develop students’ ‘talents (innate abilities)’ and operate a customized reset admission program, even ‘talents buried underground’ come out into the world.” He said nurturing such talents is the role of a university.
His voice grew stronger when boasting that Dongseo University has been winning the world’s most prestigious advertising awards for three consecutive years, something even major domestic advertising companies often fail to achieve.
This year marks the 30th anniversary of the university’s founding. He has been serving as the university president for about ten years, succeeding his father and mother, the founders.
The barren land with only a few thatched houses on a hillside has now transformed into a ‘forest of wisdom.’
A few years ago, the late founder Jang Seong-man and current Chairman Park Dong-soon, along with missionary Richard Lash and his wife, broke ground for the vocational school (now Gyeongnam Information University) in 1965. Next to it, the newly established College of Engineering (now Dongseo University) is celebrating its 30th anniversary this year.
Dongseo University, a relatively young private university in Busan, is celebrating its 30th anniversary on the 6th with the slogan “Thanks to You.”
Starting in 1992 with a capacity of 400 students, Dongseo University has produced over 50,000 graduates and has risen as a ‘solid prestigious school’ in the region for employment and entrepreneurship.
President Jang Je-guk set the slogan for the 30th anniversary events, including academic conferences and festivals held from the 1st to the 6th, as “Thanks to You,” greeting everyone he met with “Thanks to you.”
President Jang said, “Thanks to the parents who trusted the university and sent their children, the professors who taught students like their own lives, many graduates who achieved their dreams through effort, the local community, and the media, we have been able to run for 30 years.”
As President Jang said, everyone has run “thanks to you,” but currently, a dark shadow is deeply cast over local private universities. The school-age population is declining, attention is focused on the metropolitan area, and tuition fees have been frozen for 13 years.
President Jang likened the current crisis of local universities to being “trapped in a triangular wave” and said, “We are seeking a breakthrough through ‘low-cost, high-efficiency’ education to escape sinking.”
He revealed three secret strategies Dongseo University pursues to overcome the crisis: the ‘Film Director-type Professor System,’ ‘Global Experiential Learning Sites (GELS),’ and ‘Overseas Joint University Projects.’
“Starting next year, we plan to pilot the film director-type system at the university. Professors act like film directors, coordinating education by casting subject matter experts, teaching in teams, and disbanding after the semester ends.”
President Jang pointed out that the traditional university professor operation method is inefficient in today’s era because the same professor repeats the same classes until retirement, increasing fixed costs, while technology and academia fail to keep up with the times. He meant that without a flexible structure using the best experts in each part like film production, universities cannot survive.
Looking 10 to 20 years ahead, he said the film director-type professor system is about 30% more efficient than the current university maintenance costs.
The second secret strategy President Jang revealed was also ingenious. “If every university is the same, local small and medium universities will be crushed by Seoul,” he said, introducing a “model that does not exist in the world.”
Since the Earth is the classroom, students use the global field they find themselves as a campus instead of classrooms, or study in a new regulation-free college (Q College) within the university where there are no restrictions, proceeding with customized education.
President Jang said, “A student who wants to study melting glaciers and disappearing polar bears can go directly to the ‘GELS at the Arctic’ campus instead of a classroom,” and added, “We plan to establish 1,000 such Global Experiential Learning Sites worldwide.”
The third plan is a joint university model that attracts overseas students. Dongseo University has already been running a Korea-China joint university in Wuhan, China, for over 10 years, receiving about 300 international students annually and enjoying considerable success.
This fall, they will open a design joint university in Shanghai, marking the birth of the second joint university. Additionally, they are exporting Korean education online to Lithuania, Indonesia, Vietnam, and other countries.
President Jang said, “We plan to open the Asian Alliance University (AAU), an online university targeting all Asians, in Malaysia by 2024.” He explained that Dongseo University will operate the educational content delivery for this new concept university.
If there are countries that do not recognize online lectures alone, students admitted to this university will take classes at local universities that have joined the alliance. When students reach their third year at AAU, they will study abroad at Dongseo University.
President Jang Je-guk said, “Our slogan for nurturing university talent is BDAD (Before Dongseo After Dongseo). Please watch how freshmen change into what kind of talents by the time they graduate.”
President Jang earned his bachelor’s and master’s degrees in political science from George Washington University and a Juris Doctor from Syracuse University College of Law, alma mater of current U.S. President Joe Biden. Afterward, he earned a Ph.D. in political science from Keio University Graduate School in Japan before returning to Korea.
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