Responding to companies’ needs for skilled undergraduate students, university students are turning to extracurricular activities. The extracurricular activities have become the essential part of university student lives. What students do in these extra-curricular activities are substantially more than spending their spare time. Currently, the activities range from internships to overseas language programs. The most frequent and perhaps the most popular activity is called the ‘University Students Supporters’ program where students become part of an organization and successfully complete the given assignments.

Many of these programs are offered through government or social-organizations and their intents are to provide students with meaningful experiences and opportunities beyond what university can typically offer. From honorary ambassador of blood donation to anti-smoking delegates, the ‘University Student Supporters’ programs provide various insights to the participating students. Additionally, there are activities established by corporations. These activities provide additional advantages to students ? the advantages of getting involved with the workforce of the corporations. Much information about these activities are publicly available through SNS (Social Network Services) and blogs.

If the aim of the university students and the purpose of these ‘supporters’ activities are matched, the participations in these activities provide invaluable experiences. Those are the exact thoughts for many students. “Since we are still young and we are not used to real jobs, these are no small challenges. But when we work together as a team, we will be able to produce remarkable accomplishments and succeed much beyond our expectations” says one university student.

However, there are often problems with these programs. For example, there are activities whose goal is to only publicize a company or activities that are mundane part-time jobs where students have to monotonously focus on tasks such as posting comments. With a growing number of university students pursuing extracurricular activities and numerous organizations providing these activities, it is clear that problems are bound to happen and it can possibly be growing.

Many people point out that the organizations maybe using extracurricular activities to publicize their own companies. By announcing they are recruiting new supporters, these institutions or corporations are advertising their companies to students. And, applicants spend a significant amount of time to get to know the institutions or corporations. Considering that only extremely few students are selected from a large group of applicants, there are many students who feel left out and feel like they have wasted their time. Moreover, because of one of the required qualifications is the use of SNS, supporters’ activities are endlessly exposed to unspecified people of the cyber space.

Although these supporters’ activities have known side effects, the reason why it is so popular is that these activities do provide much needed experiences to university students. By working as supporters, the students are gaining “invaluable experiences”. That is the reason why so many students apply for these ‘supporter’ activities even though they may not have clear information about the companies or the activities.

The ‘supporter’ literally means “a person who backs up” or “a person who is helping”. It is important that mutual support and advantages exist for both university students and the companies so that both gain true benefits from each other through these activities. And that is the true value of these supporters’ programs.

Lee Jung-Kwon(Reporter)

gazgaz1213@kookmin.ac.kr