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Over the last two decades, enumeration has become a critical force in crafting the governmentalities of globalizing higher education. Whether in the glossy Web sites and documentation of the world's 'top universities' or in more fine-tuned regional and subject guides, accreditation schemes, journal metrics or h-indexes, technologies for measuring and ranking academic performance have not only created new imaginaries of reputation but also started to reshape institutional behavior in the pursuit of enhanced performance. In this paper, we critically explore these governmentalities of globalizing higher education through a discussion of the competing logics and landscapes of reputation and ranking in two leading universities in South Korea. Our analysis draws attention to the ways in which university rankings have generated a new multi-scalar geography of institutional reputation, the mismatch between quality, reputation and ranking, and the new kinds of institutional behaviors that are emerging to respond to the proliferation of ranking systems. Through this analysis, our paper offers two critical contributions to the current literature on university reputation. Firstly, we offer a critique of the high-level metrics used in university ranking and their implications for the quality of institutions. Secondly, we also argue for more nuanced accounts of ranking and reputation by scholars of higher education and in particular a greater emphasis on their successes and failures, the competing logics and unexpected outcomes of ranking and their implications for the future of universities. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Using nationally representative data from South Korea, this study tracks cumulative educational inequality at key educational transitions from lower to upper secondary education and from upper secondary to higher education. Using the effectively maintained inequality (EMI) theory, this paper firstly finds that high-socioeconomic status (SES) students take advantages of attending high-quality high schools, namely autonomous and special-purpose high schools. In addition, the findings reveal that the benefits of attending these high-caliber high schools manifest in the form of enhanced academic achievements and provide increased prospects for students to gain admission to 4-year universities in capital areas anticipated to experience future income growth. Furthermore, greater socioeconomic advantage is consistently associated with ascending the school hierarchy at each transition. The study’s findings highlight the persistent and cumulative influence of parental SES on students’ educational trajectories, reinforcing educational stratification. Overall, this study contributes to a deeper understanding of the heightening educational inequality across students’ educational pathways and offers insights into the ramifications of recent educational policy reforms in South Korea. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The Republic of Korea is a forerunner in integrating the topic of standardization into engineering education at the academic level. This study investigates developments and evolutions in the planning and operating of the University Education Promotion on Standardization (UEPS) in Korea. This paper examines why the Korean government initiated the UEPS, how the UEPS has operated, and what the educational content of the UEPS program is. This study of the UEPS may serve as a benchmark of how to incorporate technical standards into science and technology education at both the national and individual university levels. Some implications and considerations for the future introduction of similar courses in other countries are discussed. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The purpose of this study was to investigate the relationship of students' understanding of science knowledge, attitude and decision making on socio-scientific issues (SSI), especially on the issues of nuclear energy in Korea. SSI-focused instructions were developed to encourage students to understand and reflect on knowledge, attitude and decision making on nuclear energy in the current society. Eighty-nine students attended the instruction and participated in pre and post questionnaires to understand their understandings of nuclear energy. In this study, science knowledge was categorized into content and contextual knowledge, attitude consisted of images, safety, risk, potential, benefits and future roles, and decision making section included preference and alternative about lifetime extension of nuclear power plant. The results of questionnaires were analyzed by correlation, cross-tabulation and regression. As a result, while students' understandings of science knowledge were significantly improved throughout the instruction, they maintained similar attitude and decision making on the issue. Regarding the relationship of the three domains, attitude showed some degree of connection to decision making whereas science knowledge did not show a significant relationship to decision making. This finding challenges SSI teaching in content-based science curriculum and classroom. Reflection and implications on the way of teaching SSI in the classroom were discussed further in this paper. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

As the demand for international education increases, middle-income non-English speaking countries, such as South Korea, play an increasing role in hosting the world's students. This mixed-methods study compares the different motivations and experiences of international students within and outside the East Asian region. Based on findings, this paper suggests the possibility of Korea developing its position as a regional hub for education in East Asia. It also discusses related issues such as English-Medium Instruction in Korean higher education as well as strategies for international student recruitment. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper explored the power dynamics between domestic and international students in the context of higher education in an Asian non-English speaking country, Korea. Despite increased international student mobility in recent years, little is known about the relationship dynamics among students from different countries, especially related to power issues. The findings in this study suggested that international students' countries of origin and language of communication created different power statuses compared to Korean students by their empowerment and discrimination. Power differentials also existed among Korean students due to variations in their English ability to interact with international students. Conversely, international students' attitudes and acceptance influenced Korean students' attitudes toward them, irrespective of power differentials created by countries and language, as perceived by Korean students. The implications related to the recent trend of international student mobility are discussed. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

As rankings have become increasingly institutionalized in higher education, so too have the strategic responses adopted by universities to address them. A key component of these responses is the development of new expertise, embodied in personnel and organizational units, dedicated to managing quantitative assessments. We draw on a qualitative study of rankings management departments in South Korea to investigate the effects of these new actors in the field of higher education. We find that the rise of new expertise in rankings has reshaped key interdependencies both within universities and between universities and external constituents. This transformation has helped rankings management departments effectively challenge existing work routines and introduce new organizational practices. More generally, this work builds on theories of micro-level institutional change, identifying new mechanisms through which local actors effect lasting alterations in the organizational environment. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This study examines and describes how various online remote laboratory courses, necessitated by the COVID-19 pandemic, were implemented at Hankuk University in Korea in 2020. We compared four general undergraduate laboratory courses, one each for physics, chemistry, biology, and earth science, and two major-level laboratory courses taught during the spring and fall of 2020. Employing a sociocultural perspective, we examined how the changes in structures at the macro-, meso-, and micro-levels shaped the responses of educational authorities and impacted the agency of university instructors. Instructors implemented various remote laboratory courses in each content area dependent upon availability and access to material resources, including access to video of laboratory activities, and also based on the nature of experimental data associated with each content area. Drawing from survey responses and in-depth interviews with instructors and students, we share findings about how instructor practices impacted the interactions of students, the processes for evaluation, and student learning. We discuss how the global pandemic has re-ignited the debate about the role and value of experimental laboratory activities for undergraduate science majors and about the significance of hands-on versus minds-on science learning. Implications for how universities approach laboratory coursework in the post-COVID-19 are discussed, and questions for university science instruction are raised for future research. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The imperatives of social democratization and global economic competition have opened a new phase of development for the Korean university and its scholarship. The increased social demands for knowledge creation and dissemination gradually extend the scope of professional practice beyond the conventional areas of academic work. This paper explores, based upon the findings of a case study, how Korean universities and their professors have been responding to these demands and what consequences are observable. It also explains how the new demands and responses are contributing to local development. Finally, it highlights several controversial issues in the discourse on entrepreneurial scholarship and discusses these in the Korean context as points for further investigation. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Educational environment influences students' learning attitudes, and the classroom conveys the educational philosophy. The traditional college classroom design is based on the educational space that first appeared in medieval universities. Since then classrooms have not changed except in their size. In an attempt to develop a different perspective of educational environment, a new design of classroom, the active learning classroom (ALC), was established at SoongSil University in Korea. Two questionnaire surveys were conducted for diagnosing the educational effects of students' learning in the ALC and comparing the results with those obtained regarding the traditional classroom. The result proved the existence of a 'golden zone' and a 'shadow zone' in the traditional classroom, which discriminate students' learning experiences depending on seating positions. On the contrary, the ALC did not produce such positional discrimination. Students perceived the ALC environment as more inspirational, especially in regards to active class participation. Students with more emphasis on academic achievement showed greater tendency to share information and to create new ideas in the ALC. However, in the traditional classroom setting, only students with high GPAs were more motivated to learn while the gap in learning attitudes was offset in the ALC setting. In-depth discussions about research findings were undertaken and four suggestions were provided in support of school administrators and relevant institutional personnel, faculty members, and researchers for future utilization of the ALC. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The purpose of this study is to provide an overview of the Korean government's policies for building world class universities (WCUs) and their implications for Korean higher education institutions. Primarily through an extensive literature review, but also through a discussion of field interviews and the experiences of one of the authors as a public official in education policy making, this study examines the Korean government's policies to establish WCUs, as well as the outcomes and consequences of these policies. Using the framework suggested by Salmi (The challenge of establishing world-class universities. The World Bank, Washington, DC, ), the study seeks to answer the following research questions: (a) What policies has the Korean government implemented to build WCUs since the late 1990s? (b) How has the government's quest to build WCUs transformed the Korean higher education system? Specifically, how have HEIs in Korea responded to the policies implemented? (c) What issues and challenges has the Korean higher education system confronted in its quest to build WCUs? [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The features of Korean higher education development are related to sociocultural tradition (Confucian tradition), the model university ideas, and economic development in Korea. The modern university ideas adopted in Korean are based on the German model which was established by the Japanese colonial government and drawing on the US university model after the World War II. However, the modern university ideas are intertwined with socio-cultural factors and have been embedded in current Korean universities. As well as the western ideas and the Confucian tradition, the growth of Korean higher education has relied upon the rapid growth of the Korean economy. Education development is well aligned with economic development in Korea thanks to government policy initiatives. This framework can be applied in the analysis of higher education development in other countries. Higher education development cannot be solely explained by individual cultural, historical or economic factor. These three factors are interlinked and influence the development of Korean higher education. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In 2010, South Korea introduced a new student loan program that was income contingent (ICL). One of the main expected outcomes of the new loan program was to provide credit-constrained students the ability to focus on their college education rather than having to work while enrolled. To this end, this study investigates the effect of ICL on college attendance as well as two first year outcomes, including students' dropout or stop-out and working behaviors while enrolled. Using data from the Youth Panel and a difference-in-difference estimation strategy, we analyze whether or not the introduction of this new loan program improved students' educational outcomes. Our results indicate that ICL's introduction increased ICL eligible students' probability of enrolling college. On the other hand, we found insufficient evidence that ICL reduces students working part-time while enrolled in college. While the findings are contrary to the policy intensions, the current study suggests areas for future research to fully understand the impact of ICL on students and to improve the loan policy. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Pursuing creativity through collaboration with others is an important learning goal in education. The purpose of this study is to investigate how team goal orientations are related to team creativity and team achievement in collaborative learning contexts with the aim of providing a supportive environment for creative learning. Learning communities were chosen for the study because they provide a context for collaborative learning, which is considered a high-impact educational practice. A path model was proposed to test the direct and indirect relationships between team goal orientations (mastery, performance-approach, and performance-avoidance), team interaction, and team learning outcomes (team creativity and team achievement). In particular, based on the literature review, the interactive relationship between the team mastery and team performance-approach goal orientations was included in the model. Data were collected from 589 college students divided into 175 teams who participated in learning communities at a South Korean university; these data were aggregated and analyzed at the team level. The path analysis results indicated that team mastery goal orientation was positively related to increased team interaction and team creativity, and the team performance-approach goal orientation was positively related to team creativity and team achievement. Interestingly, a significant interaction effect between the team mastery and team performance-approach goal orientations on team interaction was revealed. Team interaction was significantly related to team creativity but not to team achievement. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

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This study examines whether the inequality between universities is increasing in terms of research output, in the context of the New Public Management (NPM) regime based higher education reform in South Korea. Recent reforms in higher education sectors around the world illustrate a number of characteristics of NPM, with performance-based funding standing out among others. Performance-based funding has brought up several concerns, especially with unintended consequences of the reforms such as a widening gap in the research activities of universities. We provide an exploratory case study of the South Korean higher education system where performance-based funding programs are rampant, using a novel panel dataset comprised of all the general four-year universities (n = 184) in 2009–2015. The descriptive analysis of the temporal trend of research output inequality among universities shows that the answer of whether the gap is widening or not depends greatly on the use of indices of inequality. We report the conflicting results between the ‘relative' and ‘absolute' inequality index when applied to the dataset. Our findings are followed by the discussion on the measurements of inequality and their axioms regarding the institutional Matthew effect, suggesting more consideration on the nature of the data and the context. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Improvement in human capital stock and regional economic development are associated with migration for higher education as well as with the subsequent migration of graduates. Accumulation of human capital attributable to universities' contribution is possible not only when students are attracted to the region for their higher education, but also when graduates stay to work in the university region. Previous research makes a strong argument supporting the notion that the better the quality of the university from which a student graduates, the lower the probability that she/he will migrate after graduation. However, the manner in which the quality of the university affects student mobility might differ, given the vast regional disparities. The purpose of this study is to investigate the factors affecting the migration behavior of students and graduates under the prevailing regional dualism in Korea, using the Korean Labor and Income Panel Study. Two-stage recursive models are applied to investigate how migration choice behaviors of students and graduates in the Seoul Metropolitan Area, which has a greater concentration of political, cultural, and financial functions, differ from those in the rest of the country. The empirical results demonstrate that the probability that the student will migrate for higher education is positively affected by the quality of the university. However, the results also show that the better the quality of the university, the higher the probability that graduates will migrate after completing higher education. Such a phenomenon is much more remarkable in the lesser developed areas. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This study investigated the effects of time on L2 writing quality and learners' use of writing strategies throughout the entire writing process. The analysis involved 69 Korean undergraduates' writing strategy questionnaires, retrospective interviews, and writing assignments, all of which were evaluated according to timed (in-class) and untimed (out-of-class) conditions. The results demonstrated that depending on time allotments, there were significant differences in learners' use of seven categories of writing strategies in the three stages of the writing process by skilled and less-skilled groups. For example, this study found that even less-skilled writers used metacognitive strategies, or so-called 'advanced' strategies, more often in the untimed condition than in the timed condition, revealing the role of contextual factors in the activation of writing strategies. Moreover, time was found to be one of the most influential factors in predicting the quality of writing. Despite its exploratory nature, this study provides significant insights into the mutual interplay between time and strategy deployment given the dearth of research in this area. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This study analyzes whether academics with advanced degrees from foreign universities are more research productive than their domestic counterparts in the three selected East Asian higher education systems - Korea, Hong Kong, and Malaysia. The three systems have relatively large proportions of foreign degree holders among their professoriates. The data for this study is drawn from the Changing Academic Profession survey. In our negative binominal regression analysis, we found that foreign degree holders are not more research productive than their colleagues with domestic degrees, and even slightly less productive than domestic degree holders in soft disciplines (arts, humanities, and social sciences) in Korea unless they have further foreign post-doc experience after their PhD. Furthermore, foreign degree holders are less productive in hard disciplines (natural sciences, engineering, and bio-medical sciences) in Malaysia. Finally, we discuss the findings and attribute them to contextual differences between the three localities. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The purpose of this research was to adapt and validate the 6-items Academic Major Satisfaction Scale (AMSS, Nauta in J Career Assess 15(4):446-462, ) for use in Korea. The scale was tested using 275 college students in South Korea. Results indicated adequate internal-consistency reliability of 0.87, and adequate test-retest reliability of 0.84. Confirmatory factor analysis demonstrated a unidimensional structure and measure invariance tests showed equivalent structure across gender groups. Correlations with career decision self-efficacy and variables related to subjective well-being ranged from moderate-tohigh and were all significant. All the results suggest suitable fit among the population of Korean college students. Suggestions for usage of and future research on the AMSS in the Korean context are discussed. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This study explores Korean academics’ changes in research productivity by career stage. Career stage in this study is defined as a specific cohort based on one’s length of job experience, with those in the same stage sharing similar interests, values, needs, and tasks; it is categorized into fledglings, maturing academics, established academics, and patriarchs. Academics’ research productivity in each career stage is analysed, and these characteristics are compared across academic disciplines. In addition, the factors influencing research productivity in different career stages are examined. The results indicate that research productivity among academics changes according to their career stage, and its pattern differs across academic disciplines. Thus, there is a need to provide proper reward systems or career development programs in consideration of such differences. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

Although historical changes in scientific ideas sometimes display striking similarities with students' conceptual progressions, some scholars have cautioned that such similarities lack meaningful commonalities. In the history of evolution, while Darwin and his contemporaries often used natural selection to explain evolutionary trait gain or increase, they struggled to use it to convincingly account for cases of trait loss or decrease. This study examines Darwin's evolutionary writings about trait gain and loss in the Origin of Species (On the origin of species by means of natural selection, or the preservation of favoured races in the struggle for life. D. Appleton, New York, ) and compares them to written evolutionary explanations for trait gain and loss in a large (n > 500), cross-cultural and cross-sectional sample (novices and experts from the USA and Korea). Findings indicate that significantly more students and experts applied natural selection to cases of trait gain, but like Darwin and his contemporaries, they more often applied 'use and disuse' and 'inheritance of acquired characteristics' to episodes of trait loss. Although the parallelism between Darwin's difficulties and students' struggles with trait loss are striking, significant differences also characterize explanatory model structure. Overall, however, students and scientists struggles to explain trait loss-which is a very common phenomenon in the history of life-appear to transcend time, place, and level of biological expertise. The significance of these findings for evolution education are discussed; in particular, the situated nature of biological reasoning, and the important role that the history of science can play in understanding cognitive constraints on science learning. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Using multilevel models, this study examined whether the strength of the association between student engagement and development of generic student competencies (GSCs) varies across Korean colleges. Data from the Korean Educational Development Institute's 2007 national sample and from 5,445 students representing 60 four-year colleges and universities were utilized. The results indicate that a specific type of engagement is linked to a particular learning outcome, which means that not every engagement type has an equal impact thereon. The findings also suggest that in Korea, the impact on GSC of one of the student engagement types, that is, active learning, significantly varies by college mission and the peer climate of cooperative learning. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The study investigated the stakeholders' perceptions of South Korea's higher education internationalization policy. Based on the research framework that defines four policy values-propriety, effectiveness, diversity, and engagement, the convergence model was employed with a concurrent mixed method sampling strategy to analyze the stakeholders' perceptions. According to the findings, the stakeholders perceived that the government's internationalization policy to date has contributed to the international competitiveness of Korean universities by and large in a quantitative manner. Their views however signaled that the government should consider the quality and identity of Korean higher education institutions when designing and implementing internationalization policy. Based on the implications that the findings have in the policy context, this study suggested two points for future policy research into Korean higher education internationalization: (1) develop a glonacal definition of world-classness for Korean universities and (2) build up a mixture model of centralization and decentralization for the government-university relations, which encourages internal self-governance of Korean universities. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This study evaluated the effects of South Korea’s Brain Korea 21 (BK 21) project, a special research funding program designed to build world-class research university. The effects were measured by examining the frequency of article publications in SCI journals during the 1995–2005 period. The results of the analysis indicated that the growth of research publications from Korean research universities was increased significantly following the implementation of the BK 21 project in 1999. In addition, during the period under study, four research universities (Yonsei, Korea, Sungkyunkwan, and Hanyang) were newly emerged. However, the growth rate of research publications was not different from that of the US and Japan, and even less than that of China. Thus, although the BK 21 project contributed to the growth of research publications of Korean universities, the project did not lessen the gap between Korea universities and world-class research universities in the US or Japan in number of publications. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Current trends in the management of e-learning content in Korean higher education are reviewed, along with important issues for future development. South Korean technological infrastructure, among the most advanced in the world, provides the necessary conditions for e-learning to proliferate, but as e-learning in higher education approaches a certain level of maturity and proliferation, there will emerge issues to be resolved at the national level. Suggested future considerations include establishing a national level of overarching planning for courseware management; university and consortium level planning for quality content management; e-learning content sharing systems through such methods as learning technology standardization; and a training and support system for specialists in educational development, instruction, and administration that can operate mutually and concurrently. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]