Local education offices are set to actively recruit international students. (Image courtesy of the Korean Council for University College Education)
SEJONG, Jan. 10 (Korea Bizwire) – In response to the decreasing student population in South Korea, local education offices are set to actively recruit international students. The Ministry of Education announced on January 9 that nine education offices, including Gwangju, North Gyeongsang Province, Daegu, Busan, Seoul, Incheon, South Jeolla Province, South Chungcheong Province, and North Chungcheong Province, have been selected for the new project.
This initiative, introduced for the first time this year, is a follow-up to the ‘Plan to Enhance Educational Competitiveness of International Students’ announced in August last year. The project aims to promote Korean language education abroad and maximize potential demand for studying in Korea, through collaboration between local education offices and Korean educational institutions overseas.
The selected education offices will dispatch staff, including Korean language teachers and general administrative officials, to support Korean language dissemination and administrative tasks related to attracting international students to affiliated educational institutions abroad.
The Ministry of Education will support the nine selected education offices with a special grant of 10.4 billion won. Each office will additionally invest 22 billion won from their local education budgets to pursue international educational exchange and cooperation projects with Korean educational institutions.
Based on the results of this year’s pilot, the Ministry of Education plans to expand the scale of the program and increase the number of participating education offices in the future.
Song Geun-hyun, Director of Global Education Planning at the Ministry of Education, stated, “Through regional-specific international exchanges, a foundation will be established to vitalize Korean language education and attract international students.”
With the decline in the student population leading to a decrease in university enrollments, universities are increasingly feeling the need to boost their student numbers and secure funding through initiatives such as attracting international students.
M. H. Lee (mhlee@koreabizwire.com)
