The LH Land & Housing University, Just a Source of Income for Retirees

The LH Land & Housing University turned out to be an income source for retired employees of the Korea Land and Housing Corporation (LH).

On October 4, People Power Party lawmaker Jeong Dong-man of the parliamentary Land, Infrastructure and Transport Committee said, “LH claimed to promote bold innovations after the land speculation by its employees last year, but there are still many problems throughout the corporation.”

According to the “Status of LH Land & Housing University Faculty,” which lawmaker Jeong Dong-man received from LH on Tuesday for the parliamentary inspection, the eleven full-time professors subject to the peak wage system and the six non-full-time professors, who were former board members, received up to 90 million won a year for teaching 2-6 hours a week.

Outside lecturers were also mostly former full-time professors, who had retired from LH, and most of the faculty (63 in total) in the second semester of 2022 were former or incumbent LH board members.

Just before the state corporation stopped hiring new part-time faculty members, they hired a former LH vice president as a part-time faculty member and extended the contracts of existing faculty members. Thus LH retirees continued to receive high salaries for teaching at the university.

However, the company stopped hiring LH retirees this year.

Currently, the eleven full-time professors are employees of LH who are subject to the peak wage system. The six non-full-time faculty members are former LH executives, whose annual salary has a cap of 90 million won. The hourly wage for the thirty adjunct professors, who are also LH employees, is set at 60,000-80,000 won. The sixteen outside lecturers were also former full-time professors of LH Land & Housing University, and their wage was also set at 60,000-80,000 won an hour.

LH Land & Housing University opened in 2013, during the Park Geun-hye government, to provide a bachelor’s degree to LH employees who joined the company straight out of high school. However, the percentage of new LH employees with a high school diploma among the school’s freshmen continued to drop from 64.0% in 2018 to 32.5% last year.

Lawmaker Jeong said, “The problem was pointed out every year, but the LH Land & Housing University remained a shelter for LH retirees,” and argued, “Complete reforms in the faculty and the curriculum are necessary to foster competent people skilled in both theory and practice as the original purpose of the university.”

Meanwhile, an LH representative announced, “Beginning this year, we lowered the wages of the faculty and made reforms to the faculty system. We stopped hiring retired executives and began inviting the public to apply for full-time professor positions to avoid any unnecessary misunderstanding.”