Korean higher education has been developed in quantitative aspects greatly since it had been generalized after 1980s. However, the beginning of "Knowledge-based Society" after 1990s became the turning point for the trend of Korean Higher education. It...
Korean higher education has been developed in quantitative aspects greatly since it had been generalized after 1980s. However, the beginning of "Knowledge-based Society" after 1990s became the turning point for the trend of Korean Higher education. It was possible for Korean higher education to improve "the equality of opportunity to be educated" through the quantitative development.
On the other hand, it was difficult at the same time for Korean higher education to avoid the criticism that quality of education is lower than the other developed countries and Korean universities lose international competitiveness.
To solve these problems, the effort to improve the competitiveness of universities has been putting by the government. First of all, change of the high cost-low efficiency structures in national universities and encouraging universities to have autonomy are recommended to strengthen the competitiveness. Incorporation, merger and abolition of universities are suggested as alternatives. There are also opinions that the government has to distribute the financial supports by the performance evaluation rather than the institution type. They insist that 80% of Korean universities are the private universities and the 75% of Korean university students go to private universities. Therefore, the financial support has to be allowed by the performance not by institution type.
It is time for Korea to discuss about the qualitative development over the quantitative one. For that matter, the study about educational performance of universities is very needed. However, evaluation on educational performance is not easy in some reasons. First, educational services provided by universities are not private goods, so it is difficult to evaluate just in monetary way. Second, there is no clear standards for performance such as profit in private sector. For these reasons, educational performance of universities has not been studied in separated field yet. Despite this difficulty, this research focuses on educational performance, because managing and evaluating universities are the unavoidable task nowadays.
This research uses educational data from 「2008 우수인력양성대학 교육역량강화사업」 to analyze educational performance of universities empirically.
This research sets the institution type, physical location of the universities and the scale as a main factors expected to effect on educational performance of universities. Based on the framework in which performance of universities will be different by those factors, this study set up three hypothesises and examines them.
This research tried empirical analysis through Model Ⅰ,Ⅱ, and Ⅲ. Each dependent variable of Models as follows. ModelⅠ is the supplement rate of the student, Model Ⅱ is the educational performance, and Model Ⅲ is the condition of education and the educational performance. The reason to devide the research in three parts is for analyzing the factors clearly. The results of it as follows.
First, in aspect of the supplement rate of the student, there is statistically significant difference in educational performance of universities by classification of the institution type and physical location of the universities. There were also significant difference in groups. In addition, the interaction effect of the institution type, physical location of the universities, and scale affects educational performance of universities. On the other hand, the institution type*physical location of the universities does not affect the performance.
Second, in aspect of the educational performances, there is statistically significant difference in educational performance of universities by classification of the institution type and physical location of the universities. There was also significant difference in groups. Moreover, the interaction effect of the institution type, physical location of the universities do not affect educational performance of universities while the scale and the institution type*physical location of the universities do. In these regard, some facts can be founded. First, the larger the university is, the higher the educational performance is. Second, the institution type and physical location of the universities do not affect educational performance of universities as separated variables, but they do when they interact. In other words, when the university is national and located in the metropolitan area, the educational performance of universities is higher than those of universities which are national-non metropolitan area, private-metropolitan area, or private-non metropolitan area.
Third, in aspect of the educational performance and the coedition of education, there is statistically significant difference in educational performance of universities by classification of the institution type and physical location of the universities. There was also significant difference in groups. The interaction effect of the institution type and physical location of the universities does not affect educational performance of universities while the scale and the institution type*physical location of the universities do. This means that the institution type and physical location of the universities do not affect the performance of universities as separated variables, but do as they become one variable by interaction.
The implication of this study to policy as follows. First, it is important to focus on main indexes rather than the composite ones, when measuring the educational performance of universities. The power of explanation gets weaker as we moved from Model Ⅰ→Ⅱ→Ⅲ. It can be explained that factors added in Model Ⅱ,Ⅲ changed the result as they interact with other variables. Second, there should be more creative effort to improve the educational performance of universities in non-metropolitan area. As it was founded in the research, there is difference in the educational performance of universities by physical location of the universities. Those in metropolitan area show higher performance than those in rural. Therefore, this distintion should be reflected when distributing financial support to develop universities in balanced way. Third, there is need to make universities larger. From the research resent, it was drowned that the larger the university is, the higher the performance is and the scale of university has important relation with the performance. Small-scale specialized universities are necessary, but there are too many those small-scale universities with serious financial crisis. In this situation, it is hard to expect the improvement of the educational performance of the universities. To improve this, phenomenon of M&A between universities has to be strongly considered. Moreover, more effort should be put into the merger and abolition of universities to make universities have more competitiveness.