SEOUL, KOREA - A survey said most Korean university presidents believe that universities need a fundamental reform while the current promotion scheme for professors is seriously flawed. In order to keep professors from remaining in their comfort zone and encourage them to produce more output, the presidents said, they need a stick as much as a carrot, such as not granting tenure to those who do not publish enough.
According to a survey taken by the Korea Economic Daily just before the opening of the Global HR Forum 2014 to 51 presidents of four-year universities, the most serious problem in today's Korean universities is a lack of motivation for professors to work harder. Of the presidents, 41.2 percent said the professors' salaries must be linked to their research performance
Another 37.3 percent answered that a tenure contract must be given only to those professors who fulfill a certain level of performance while 15.7 percent of the respondents said a number of mandatory journal articles must be applied for each year. Some of the presidents said in some areas of discipline the criteria must be based on patent application or commercialization performance instead of journal article publication performance.
Most presidents agreed that the easy-going attitude of tenured professors is a serious problem. As many as 72.5 percent of the presidents answered that a performance-based compensation scheme must be introduced to encourage tenured professors to produce more output. Some of them (5.9%) were radical enough to suggest that non-performing professors be penalized with pay cut or suspended.
Article provided by The Korea Economic Daily
저작권자 © Korea IT Times 무단전재 및 재배포 금지
