A parent of high schooler takes notes in preparation for the college entrance exam during a seminar held in southern Seoul on Sept. 6.NEWS1
University mergers over the past two decades have increased admissions competition and reduced student numbers, but have done little to streamline faculty or academic departments, an analysis found Tuesday.
Such integrations reduced staffing and organizational size in the short term but did little to improve long-term operational efficiency, according to a Korean Educational Development Institute report, which analyzed 27 of the 37 university mergers and consolidations carried out between 2000 and this year.
University consolidation has become a state-led policy response to the shrinking college-age population. Universities that successfully merge under government initiatives aimed at developing regional talent and strengthening local universities — namely the "Glocal University 30" project — can receive more than 100 billion won ($74 million) per school.
But such efforts have often met resistance on campus and beyond, including proposed mergers between Chungnam National University and Kongju National University in the Chungcheong region and between Mokpo National University and Sunchon National University in the Jeolla region.
The admissions competition rate rose by 1.66 applicants per available spot immediately after universities merged and continued rising in subsequent years, according to the findings. That means a university with a 2-to-1 admissions ratio would see it rise to 3.66-to-1 immediately after a merger.
The first-year student enrollment rate also improved by 2.51 percentage points immediately after a merger, while international student enrollment increased by about 99, followed by annual gains of roughly 35 students.
Immediately after a merger, the enrollment maximum fell by 457 students per university and total enrollment by 827. Enrollment quotas continued to decline in subsequent years.
The picture was different when it came to deeper restructuring. Universities initially shed 130 nontenure-track faculty members and 11 departments after a merger, but those cuts did not last. Nontenure-track faculty subsequently increased by an average of 20.8 per year, staff by 5.5 and departments by 0.7, while full-time faculty numbers kept rising before and after mergers.
Undergraduate students stage a rally to protest a university merger and tuition hike in central Seoul on May 28, 2023.NEWS1
The impact also varied by location and institution type. Admissions competition rose more at universities in the greater Seoul area than elsewhere, while national and public universities saw smaller declines in enrollment quotas and student populations than private institutions and the number of academic departments actually increased.
Mergers that combined two universities into a single campus produced clearer gains in admissions competition and reductions in institutional size. The effects were weaker when universities retained their existing campuses after merging.
“Future university merger policies should go beyond simply reducing the number of universities and enrollment quotas,” said Kim Taek-hyung, an associate research fellow at the institute. “Resources should be reallocated and monitoring strengthened to improve universities’ long-term sustainability.”
This article was originally written in Korean and translated by a bilingual reporter with the help of generative AI tools. It was then edited by a native English-speaking editor. All AI-assisted translations are reviewed and refined by our newsroom.
