"A university is a higher educational institution where a range of academic research is done and where a student develops leadership qualities."

This dictionary definition clearly expresses the meaning of a university as an institution. Nowadays, however, there is room for some doubt about how much this definition still applies. However, Korean universities don’t seem to provide students with education to correspond to it. Even though tuition fees are currently almost 10,000,000 won, there is an unprecedented high percentage of students who go on to higher education in this country. In this circumstance,  we need to reconsider the role of universities to survive intensifying competition and to improve managerial efficiency.

Most people enter universities to study a range of academic fields and to develop leadership qualities and attributes that are appropriate to the times. A university is generally a place where students develop their capacity of logical thought while broadening their knowledge and applied abilities. It is difficult, however, to study across a range of academic fields in Korean universities because most majors are so thoroughly compartmentalized. In order to cope with the rising demand for consilience, Korean universities have been opening new departments lately which combine a number of disciplines, but the wall between faculties is still high. Even more unfortunate is that Humanities subjects and students majoring in Humanities are being disregarded as universities prefer more pragmatic studies in the current competitive society. Now university Humanities classes are threatened by the lower employment rate of their graduates and their lack of a clear vocational outcome. Deans of the college of Humanities proclaimed a humanities crisis in 2006 and they reiterated it more recently, despite some breakthroughs such as on-line and off-line lectures and forums. There needs to be a way to diagnose the crisis more correctly and a way to escape the threat to the humanities.

Is it unrealistic to expect that Korean students who confront the worst job markets in generations desperately feel the necessity of the Humanities? Koo Hak-su (Vice president of the Shinsegae Group) said, "I'll select graduates who are well grounded in the Humanities." He added that a person of ability who needed to know about business in the future should have a knowledge of history, literature and philosophy so they could have a broad understanding of the problems that companies face. In fact, there are many Humanities majors among the CEOs of successful corporations worldwide. In countries such as the U.S. and the U.K., many people from the Humanities are good at finance, politics and law because they have creativity, communicative ability, leadership and insights concerning society and humanity. Therefore, prestigious universities in the US, including Harvard, consider the Humanities as the foundation of all studies. Also, many other foreign universities concentrate on improving each student°Øs depth and breadth of study to improve their education. Their aim is that each student should have their own °Æbirds eye view°Ø of the world to avoid having a too narrow-minded perspective. It is undeniable that the Humanities are in crisis but if companies recognize their importance then demand for their study will continue to be a necessity.

Of course, the crisis of the Humanities isn't occurring just in Korea. However the way we deal with the crisis is different from other countries. Universities should take steps to make an optimal educational environment for their students and make long-term policy plans. In Korea, which has the highest number of students majoring in the Humanities, the role of the University is to support and carefully cultivate people with a broadly based education who are required in society.

THE KOOKMIN REVIEW No.214