Quick to Remove Directors of General Administration, Yet 70% of Those Positions in National Universities Remain Vacant

Five months have passed since the Ministry of Education suddenly removed a large number of directors overseeing the general administration of national universities claiming to remove ministry officials from the position, but the office of the director of general administration still remains vacant in seven out of ten schools. By hastily promoting a policy, the education ministry created a vacancy in a position that oversees the overall management of a university at a crucial moment in seeking solutions to challenges faced by local universities.

According to the information that Justice Party lawmaker Lee Eun-ju received from the education ministry on February 9, as of February 2, nineteen (70.4%) of the twenty-seven national universities nationwide did not have a director of general administration. The head of general administration is a powerful position that oversees the human resources, administration, and finances of a national university. The education ministry has the authority to appoint the director, and with the exception of schools that publicly recruited the chiefs of general administration, the education ministry had assigned director-level civil servants to lead the office of general administration in twenty-one schools.

In the past, many criticized the education ministry for controlling national universities by assigning their officials to head the general administration office and argued for new ways to appoint them. Thus, on September 26, 2022, the Ministry of Education announced changes that would exclude education ministry officials when appointing the directors of general administration. At the time, the office of the education minister was also vacant, since Park Soon-ae, the former deputy prime minister for social affairs and minister of education, had resigned following the controversy over lowering the school age to five.

The day the ministry announced the changes, they simultaneously removed ten officials assigned to national universities and put them on a waiting list for future assignments. On October 21, they forced another four officials to wait for new assignments during the night, as soon as the parliamentary inspection ended, and transferred two other officials serving as chief of general administration. In less than a month, a major position in national universities throughout the country had disappeared. At the time, the National Council of Presidents of National and Public Universities suggested that there was no need to completely exclude education ministry officials, but their opinion was not accepted.

Five months have passed since then, but new directors have been assigned to only four universities so far. In January, the education ministry appointed four public officials dispatched from the Office for Government Policy Coordination and the Ministry of Health and Welfare as the director of general administration in four national universities. Currently, seventeen national universities still do not have a director of general administration. Among them, two schools are undergoing or will undergo a public recruitment process and discussions on inter-ministerial exchanges of human resources are underway for six universities. The beginning of a new school year in March is fast approaching, but eleven universities have yet to begin any process to hire new directors. The Justice Party policy committee pointed out, “The number of students is declining and local universities face challenging times. It is a time to seek various approaches to help our national universities to grow, and that the important position of director of general administration is absent is a big problem.”

A representative of the education ministry explained, “We are working to assign new directors as fast as we can before the new school year with exchanges in human resources with other ministries,” and said, “As for schools where such assignments are not likely, we will enable them to publicly hire new directors.”