Korea has transformed its higher education participation rates from among the lowest to the highest in the OECD in the space of a generation, and plans are in place to boost the already substantial annual R&D budget to a whopping 5% of the nation’s GDP.
This extraordinary emphasis on higher education is perhaps matched only by China, and has had a demonstrable effect on the performance of Korea’s leading universities in the last five years, on both a global and regional scale.
The leading seven Korean universities all either maintain or improve their position in this year’s QS University Rankings: Asia. Seoul National University (SNU) maintains its fourth place, a notable improvement compared to 2009, when it ranked eight. In the same period SNU has improved its global ranking from 47= to 37th, and makes the global top 30 in the faculty rankings for both natural sciences and social sciences and management.
KAIST is consolidating its reputation as a major player in science and technology, and this year improves its regional rank by one place to rank sixth. KAIST also ranks 4th in the QS Top 50 Under 50 ranking, and has made rapid strides to improve its global standing. Having ranked 132= in the inaugural QS World University Rankings in 2007, KAIST now stands at 63rd in the world, and looks set to break into the global top 50 sooner rather than later.
With POSTECH (7=) joining SNU and KAIST in the Asian top ten, Korea’s rise shows a shift in the regional balance of power that has its roots in higher education investment.
However, despite these positives the performance of Korean universities paints a polarized picture. While performance of leading institutions continues to improve, Korean institutions outside of the top 100 have seen a general decline. This suggests the realignment of funds towards producing internationally competitive institutions at the top end may have come at the cost of stalling the development of institutions further down the table.