Dr. Hamid Hefazi’s contribution to the Maeil Business Newspaper
AuthorAdministratorREG_DATE2022.02.17Hits482
Engineering Education in South Korea by the Numbers
During the past few decades, South Korea has experienced the highest economic growth in the shortest time ever seen in modern world history.This growth was accomplished by investing in Heavy and Chemical Industries (HCI) during the 1970s, followed by the development of high technology-focused industries. At the time, the country lacked adequate engineering educational institutions to support such growth. As a result, the main body of research institutions (such as the Korean Institute of Science and Technology), which provided support for high tech industries, consisted of researchers with Ph.D. training from abroad.
The history of contemporary science and engineering education in Korea dates to the early 1900s. Ten engineering students on the college level graduated in 1918 and four more students in mathematics and physics graduated in 1919. The first Bachelor’s degrees, which consisted of one in physics, four in mechanical engineering, two in metallurgical engineering, five in electrical engineering, and two in chemical engineering were awarded in 1943.
Today university education and research in Korea are quite diverse. The university entrance rate (percentage of high school graduates who enter higher education institutions) increased from 33% (1990) to 68.2 % (2014) and 71.5 % (2021). Despite this increase in rate, the university enrollment numbers have dropped from a peak of 2.13 million in 2014 to 1.93 million students in 2021. Korea's ranking with regard to published SCI journals went up from 34th (1990) to 12th (2015) out of 180 countries.
In 2021, there were around 202 universities and 134 community colleges in Korea. There were also a large number of other higher education institutions such as industrial universities, graduate universities, and graduate schools that are unaffiliated with a university. One hundred sixty (160) universities offered at least one undergraduate engineering program.
In 2019, more than 571,000 undergraduate students were enrolled in engineering programs.Computer Science and Engineering with 45,654 and Mechanical Engineering with 44,703 had the two highest enrollments. The population of Korea is approximately 16% of the US, however the number of undergraduate engineering students in Korea was 61% of 622,550 engineering students in the US.Similarly, more than 30,000 Master’s and 18,000 Ph.D. students were enrolled in engineering programs in Korea in 2019. These were 32% and 22 % respectively of those in the US.
More than 81,300 BS engineering and computer science degrees were awarded in Korea in 2019. This was close to 42% of the 191,336 BS engineering degrees that were awarded in the US.In Korea, the highest percentage of degrees (12.5%) was awarded in mechanical engineering with computer science and engineering a close second at 12.1%. In the US. mechanical engineering and computer science comprised 22.5 % and 29% respectively of the total degrees.
Engineering profession and education have historically been male-dominated and despite some progress in recent years, they continue to be so. For example, in the US, women earned 21.9 % of bachelor’s degrees, 26.7% of master’s degrees, and 23.6% of doctoral degrees in engineering in 2019. The disciplines where women earned over 40% of the bachelor’s degrees in were environment engineering, biological/agricultural engineering, and biomedical engineering.
In Korea, in 2019, 23% (5, 18,745) of BS degrees were awarded to women. The highest percentage of engineering BS degrees awarded to women was in Architectural Engineering (41.5%) and the lowest in Mechanical Engineering (9.5%). The numbers for MS degrees awarded to women were 2,781 out of 13,722 (20%) and 507 out of 4,217 (12%) for Doctoral degrees.
From 385,350 enrolled engineering undergraduates in Korea in 2019, about 1.5% or 5,860 were international students.The numbers for MS and Doctoral degrees were 2,599 out of 30,342 (8.5%) and 2,621 out of 17,986 (14.5%).Computer science and engineering and mechanical engineering are the two top choices for international students.
Despite recent decreases in the numbers, US remains the top destination for international students. The number of international students in US universities dropped by 15% from a peak of 1.1 million in 2019 to 914000 in 2020/21. In 2019, About 21% or close to 230,000 of them were studying engineering.This represents 29% of over 795,000 students in undergraduate and graduate engineering programs in the US. In 2018, 10.5 %, 57.1% and 56.3% of BS, MS and Ph.D. engineering degrees in the US were awarded to international students.
Over 39,000 Korean students studied in the US during the 2020/21 academic year. This is 12 % less than close to 49,800 in 2019/20 and represents close to 4.2% of the total international students in the US. Korea is ranked third after China and India. The influx of Korean students adds close to $2.3 billion to the US economy each year.
During the past few decades, Korea has achieved eye-opening progress, producing significant quantitative growth and increased quality in engineering education. However, recent trends lead by the decline of the school-age population and the shift towards a creative economy calls for urgent qualitative and quantitative research focused on reform of universities to meet the needs of the country.