Exclusion of 4 Major Requirements for Enrollment Increase
Abolishment of Graduate Faculty Securing Rate Requirement
Improvement of Graduate Information Disclosure Method
The Ministry of Education will abolish the requirements for establishing new departments and increasing student quotas at graduate schools outside the metropolitan area to enable autonomous innovation such as university department restructuring. Additionally, it will relax the adjustment criteria to facilitate the reallocation of quotas among undergraduate, master's, and doctoral programs at all universities.
On the 23rd, the Ministry of Education announced that the partial amendment to the 'Regulations on University Establishment and Operation' was reviewed and approved at the Cabinet meeting. Previously, in October last year, the Ministry had announced the amendment for legislative notice.
Under current regulations, universities can only increase their quotas if they meet all four major requirements. The amendment abolishes this, allowing autonomous quota increases at graduate schools outside the metropolitan area. The current four nationwide common requirements for undergraduate and graduate schools are ▲campus land (meeting building-related legal requirements) ▲classrooms (12㎡ for humanities and social sciences, 14㎡ for others) ▲faculty (25 for humanities and social sciences, 20 for natural sciences, engineering, and arts, 8 for medicine) ▲basic property for profit (securing tuition and fee income or university support of at least 2.8% of tuition and fee income). These apply commonly to general, professional, and special graduate schools.
Furthermore, the requirement for faculty securing rate in mutual adjustment of university quotas will be abolished, and the criteria for mutual adjustment of student quotas among undergraduate, master's, and doctoral programs will be relaxed. Until now, mutual adjustment of university quotas was only allowed for universities with a faculty securing rate of 65% or higher, and the post-adjustment faculty securing rate had to be maintained at or above the previous year's rate. This amendment removes such requirements, making mutual adjustment of student quotas among undergraduate, master's, and doctoral programs possible at all universities in the future.
In addition, the mutual adjustment ratio between master's and doctoral quotas, which had been maintained at 2:1, will be adjusted to 1:1. Previously, to increase the doctoral program admission quota by one, the admission quotas for undergraduate and master's programs had to be reduced by two. Now, the adjustment ratio among undergraduate, master's, and doctoral quotas will be unified to 1:1:1, facilitating easier quota transfers from undergraduate to graduate programs.
The Ministry of Education will also strengthen information disclosure to manage the quality of graduate education. The quality management approach, which had focused on input stages such as graduate quota increases and new department establishments, will shift to performance management to enhance university accountability. Major indicators finalized after public consultation will be sequentially reflected in the information disclosure system.
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