Shin Mee-kyung, director of the Instructional Globalization Division on the Ministry of Training / Courtesy of Ministry of Training
As Korea has emerged as an more and more well-liked research vacation spot for worldwide college students, issues have grown that help methods on the bottom haven’t saved tempo.
In response, the Ministry of Training is shifting its focus past recruitment, introducing new analysis standards and statistical measures designed to strengthen post-arrival help and create clearer pathways for long-term settlement.
“It has been almost twenty years for the reason that authorities started insurance policies for worldwide college students round 2004, however till not too long ago, we had not positioned sufficient emphasis on supporting their transition into the workforce,” Shin Mee-kyung, director of the Instructional Globalization Division on the Ministry of Training, stated throughout an interview with The Korea Instances.
She added that momentum started to construct as the federal government launched its Research Korea 300K initiative two years in the past, amid issues over regional inhabitants declines and mounting labor shortages outdoors main cities.
“That shift made it clear that supporting worldwide college students’ employment and settlement needed to turn out to be a precedence, and since then, ministries, universities and native governments have been transferring in that course,” Shin stated.
On the heart of the schooling ministry’s present coverage push for worldwide college students is the Worldwide Training High quality Assurance System (IEQAS), which evaluates and certifies universities on their internationalization capability to make sure higher help for international college students and strengthen Korea’s attraction as a worldwide research vacation spot.
For the primary time, the ministry has added a class assessing profession and employment help, marking a big shift from the system’s earlier focus, which largely examined educational help.
The ministry launched its reform plan in August final yr and has since begun evaluating how successfully universities present profession steerage and job-related applications for worldwide college students. The brand new metric will likely be mirrored within the certification outcomes to be introduced round February subsequent yr.
“This new class is supposed to encourage universities to transcend educational help and take extra lively roles in serving to worldwide college students construct careers and settle within the nation and area,” Shin stated.
The ministry expects the change to create an surroundings that pushes establishments to strengthen on-campus profession help and integration methods as Korea seeks to retain extra world professionals.
Worldwide college students attend on-site interviews at cubicles operated by about 20 corporations through the TU World Job Honest 2025 at Tongmyong College in Busan, Nov. 6. Yonhap
The ministry can be weighing the prospect of accumulating long-term employment knowledge on worldwide graduates, a transfer geared toward monitoring their profession trajectories and extra successfully guiding coverage choices within the years forward.
Because the long-term settlement of worldwide graduates turns into an rising focus for the schooling ministry, officers say the info might make clear how successfully these college students stay in and combine into Korean society over time. The knowledge is anticipated to supply a clearer view of post-graduation pathways and spotlight areas the place universities might have to bolster help.
Moreover, the ministry plans so as to add a brand new indicator monitoring the variety of English-taught programs at every college, a measure it sees as essential to assessing how effectively establishments can accommodate college students with numerous research objectives.
In the meantime, universities are dealing with rising stress to handle visa overstay points because the variety of worldwide college students continues to climb, highlighting the necessity for stronger on-the-ground help and compliance measures.
“One technique to decrease these charges is to confess higher-quality college students from the outset,” Shin stated, pointing to admissions requirements as the primary line of management.
She warned that the extreme use of on-line programs at some establishments might injury their popularity, elevating issues that Korean universities could also be seen as locations the place levels might be obtained largely by way of on-line instruction.
Creating extra high-profile examples of worldwide graduates efficiently getting into the Korean workforce is important to sustaining pupil inflows, a activity that extends past the schooling ministry. Visa coverage implementation, overseen primarily by the Ministry of Justice, performs a decisive function.
“How visa insurance policies are carried out on the bottom has a direct impression, and nearer coordination amongst ministries is important to raised align schooling, employment and immigration insurance policies,” Shin stated.
Because the authorities’s broader stance is to constantly evaluate and ease pointless laws associated to worldwide college students, the schooling ministry plans to assemble instances, determine areas for enchancment and work with the justice ministry to revise insurance policies accordingly.
