No foreign talent, no future for Korea

If we leave such problems unattended, they will explode like a time bomb.

Kim Hyun-cheolThe author, a medical doctor and a former professor of economy and public policy at Hong Kong University of Science and Technology, is a professor at Yonsei University College of Medicine. A few days ago, I took a flight back home after working as a professor of economics at the Hong Kong University of Science and Technology (HKUST) to take up a new position at Yonsei University College of Medicine, my alma mater. That was my “full” return in 17 years after studying and teaching at Columbia University and Cornell University.

At first, I wanted to come home upon receiving a PhD from Columbia to contribute to the development of Korea. But the decision over returning home was not easy due to the good treatment and research environments for professors in the United States and Hong Kong. As I worked as a member of the faculty recruitment committee in Ithaca and Hong Kong for many years, I could see a big gap in the talent recruitment environment between overseas universities and Korean universities.

Why should universities attract top talent? That’s because they serve as an outpost for research and development (R&D) and the most important channel for nurturing and attracting talent. The World Bank’s World Development Report 2024 underscores the need for innovation if countries on the threshold of advanced economies aspire to join the exclusive club. That elevation calls for “proactive industry-university cooperation,” the report points out.

For instance, the creators of the world’s first commercialized mRNA vaccine — the Pfizer-BioNTech Covid-19 vaccine — were Dr. Ugur Sahin, a German university professor who immigrated from Turkey, and his wife Özlem Türeci. The Oxford-AstraZeneca vaccine was also created at the Jenner Institute at University of Oxford. The two cases illustrate how innovation can be achieved through industry-academia cooperation.

Top U.S. universities — which draw excellent students from around the world — and Silicon Valley, which propels economic growth in the United States, serve as an effective springboard for future phenomenal success. For example, among members of Magnificent Seven (M7) — Miscosoft, Apple, Nvidia, Alphabet, Meta, Amazon and Tesla, who drive the U.S. stock market — four CEOs are foreign-born. Microsoft’s Satya Nadella, Google’s Sundar Pachai and Tesla’s Elon Musk studied in America, and Nvidia’s Jensen Huang is a 1.5-generation immigrant from Taiwan.

Korean universities can no longer compete on the global stage with only Koreans. The percentage of foreign professors and students exceeds 50 percent in North American universities and top Asian universities in Hong Kong and Singapore. There, talents from around the world lead innovation in stark contrast to Korea, where the percentage of foreigners is only 5-10%. Universities can develop only when they play their roles as powerful channels to draw diverse talent.

But Korea’s reality points in the opposite direction. The main reason is the unfavorable treatment of professors and substandard research environments, such as low salaries and large lecture burdens. Since professors are also part of the workforce — and market principles are applied here, too — world-class professors migrate to universities offering better treatment. Such excellent scholars hesitate to teach at Korean universities.

The big gap in their annual salary is another obstacle. The money for a new assistant professor of economics at a top U.S. university is well over 200 million won ($152,440). Universities in Hong Kong and Singapore are no different; on top of the hefty salary, they provide several million won in monthly rent assistance. There’s another difference: While professors at research-focused universities earn such high salaries, professors at lecture-focused universities earn less than half the amount, or about 100 million won a year.

In Korea, major universities’ starting salary for assistant professors is around 70 million won — and even full professors often earn less than 100 million won. Moreover, it is nearly impossible to give exceptional compensation to competent professors after the adoption of a seniority-based pay system decades ago. Another disparity can be found in the number of lecture hours. I taught an average of two subjects per year at Cornell and 2.5 subjects at HKUST. With a few exceptions, professors in Korea must teach 3 to 5 subjects a year even at research-oriented universities.

I could give up my tenured professorship at HKUST to return home, largely thanks to the relatively higher salary of a medical school professor and the nearly non-existent teaching burden. Another attraction was my possible contribution to advancing Korea more actively than when I lived in foreign countries like a mercenary.

Of course, the salary of professors in Korea is higher than that of the average worker. But we must not spare investment in brilliant talents who will contribute to our economy through R&D and innovation. Outstanding researchers should be treated accordingly. The 16-year freeze on university tuition dealt a critical blow to our universities’ competitiveness. Tough regulations — such as restricting financial support for “national scholarships” when universities raise tuition to a certain level — are inappropriate.

University tuition needs to be liberalized. Also, we must significantly expand income-based scholarships. The tuition at Cornell is about 100 million won a year, and about 40 percent of the money is used as scholarships for students from low-income families. If parents’ annual income doesn’t exceed 80 million won, tuition is free. We also must adjust tuition upward and increase government support to make our universities competitive. At the same time, we must create an environment where students from poor families can receive higher education without worrying about tuition.

The universities where I worked had good incentives for professors to focus on research. There’s no reason for professors to work on government or corporate projects to compensate their regular pay. As they only need more time to research, they don’t have to serve on government committees or deliver lectures to make money. If you achieve good results in research, your performance is reflected in your salary. But if you don’t perform well, you can’t become a tenured professor or can be fired. Even if you won a tenured professorship, your salary won’t increase if you don’t research hard.

As a result, the salaries of associate professors and full professors vary greatly depending on their achievements. For instance, some of them get salaries similar to assistant professors’ even around the time they retire while others showing great performance can earn more than 500 million won a year. But Korean universities lack such incentives to work hard on research; instead, they earn extra income through external activities. Under this weird system, professors who are so devoted to research are deemed “strange.”

We must actively encourage professors to hold concurrent positions at universities at home and abroad, just like the Korea Advanced Institute of Science and Technology. This will help strengthen Korean universities’ international networks. But here in Korea, foreign professors must submit a written pledge to resign from their current universities if they want to move to Seoul National University. The restriction compels them to give up their hard-won overseas research funds.

Still, there is hope. The JoongAng Ilbo recently introduced the life story of Prof. Trinh Pham, a Vietnamese woman who had just joined the KDI School of Public Policy and Management. In fact, she was my last doctoral student at Cornell. While discussing her trip to Korea after she received a PhD in economics from Cornell in May, I got a hint about Korean universities attracting foreign scholars. She had received a master’s degree from the KDI school in 2017 with a full scholarship. The hospitality she received from the school was a decisive factor in her decision to return to Korea as a professor.

Innovation is essential for Korea to become an advanced country. The transition requires securing excellent human resources first. But our universities on the frontline of the mission have trouble attracting excellent talent. That poses serious challenges to our universities, coupled with our high school students’ blind rush to enter colleges of medicine to become a doctor, as I pointed out in my earlier opinion piece titled “A country crammed with aspiring doctors has no future” on the July 8 edition of the Korea JoongAng Daily. If we leave such problems unattended, they will explode like a time bomb. The clock is ticking.

Translation by the Korea JoongAng Daily staff.