Korean universities are pushing undeclared majors — but students aren't sure

A survey revealed mixed interest in undeclared majors for 2025 university admissions, with 35.9% of respondents showing interest.

Lee Ju-Ho, deputy prime minister and education minister, speaks at the Korean Council for University Education conference in January. The undeclared major program is one of Minister Lee's main policy goals. [YONHAP]

A survey showed mixed interest in undeclared majors, even as the government pushes universities to introduce such programs for the 2025 application period.

In a survey conducted by college application platform Uwayapply, 35.9 percent of 454 prospective university applicants said that the undeclared major was the topic they were most interested in for the 2025 university admissions process. Respondents, who were surveyed between June 28 and July 2, included high school students, those who will retake the college entrance exam and those who took the Korean general equivalency diploma test.

An undeclared major system allows participating students to select their department and major after being accepted into a university.

Another 29.1 percent of respondents said they were most interested in the medical school quota increase. A total of 14.5 percent said they were most interested to know which universities had a minimum college entrance exam score requirement while 8.4 percent prioritized finding universities that would consider school violence history in their admissions decisions.

When asked how much respondents knew about the undeclared major system, 53.7 percent of respondents said they knew it quite well, 46.2 percent said they didn't know much and 7.7 percent said they didn't know anything about it.

Undeclared major programs have been considered an important topic since January, when the Ministry of Education announced that a university's proportion of undeclared students would impact its allocated funding.

Schools, in turn, raised their admissions quotas for undeclared majors by a total of 28,010 slots for the 2025 cycle.

Although international students are admitted outside of universities' general admissions quotas, some institutions plan to create new undeclared programs and departments, which could give students more options.

When asked whether they were willing to apply to undeclared major programs, 39.4 percent said they weren't sure yet. Another 37.2 percent said they would, and 23.3 percent said they would not.

“When the college application period rolls around, there will be a lot of students trying to see whether or not they should apply for undeclared major programs,” said a spokesperson for Uwayapply.

Some universities that need to prepare for college applications in September say they haven't been given adequate lead time.

“If we want to maximize the idea of giving more career exploration opportunities, the capabilities of the admissions officers are important,” said the director of admissions at a private university in Seoul. “In order not to be limited to the scope of each major, we’ve decided to have admissions officers that are part of the admissions office oversee student evaluations.”

“But because there wasn’t an increase in the number of such admissions officers, each admissions officer will now have a bigger workload.”

Solutions to the issue of worker shortage — and of students simply preferring certain majors — will be up to each university.

“We’re trying to brainstorm potential solutions, such as doing surveys of the incoming students and requiring they do dual majors,” said the director of planning at a university in Seoul that will admit around 40 percent of its incoming class as undeclared majors. “But we haven’t settled on a solution yet.”

The director mentioned the issues limited budgets create for the implementation of undeclared majors.

“If we want the undeclared major system to work as intended, we need to hire academic advisers to consult students about their career paths, recommend necessary classes and professors and create new student communities to provide a sense of belonging to undeclared students, which all require additional budget,” the director said.

“Because tuitions are getting frozen and universities are facing financial difficulties, it looks like current professors and staff will have to share this role as well.”

BY CHOI MIN-JI, KANG SUNG-MIN [matthewskang@joongang.co.kr]