Welcome to BASE21

Writer: Cho Sung-joon
Source: The Chungang Herald
Date: Dec. 1999

Have you heard of the university in the old days? What first comes to mind? Students might image an ivory tower, a hall of learning, the romance of the campus and more. However, if you ask yourself to imagine a university today, the answer would be totally different. This phenomenon shows that student thought about the university has changed as time progresses. In addition to students views, many areas of the university such as features and functions have changed and this change will continue in the upcoming new millenium. Accordingly, the cover story of the CA Herald looks back on the university's past and may be a prediction of the forthcoming change in Korean society.

The Korean idea of university is not the same as that of a western university. As a university is among high educational agencies, it has been developed spontaneously with clear traits and historical character. In case of Korea, on the other hand, the university started as a concept borrowing the form of western in order to introduce modern education. In addition, the university is used to indicate the whole high education which has a different roots from traditional high education.

It is said that the Korean university has regularly developed since liberation from the Japanese in 1945. As it rapidly developed, the university started to lead the society. The social events which university showed have played an important role in Korean society including the 4.19 Democratic Revolution. Nationwide the majority of university's students fought against the dictatorship of the Lee Sung-Man regime who held onto power by a dishonest means. At this time, particularly, even professors ,so-called the best intellectuals of the times fought with students for justice, too. Since the 4.19 Revolution, the university led most social movements until the June uprising in 1987. Accordingly, university was the nucleus of the community in Korea. At that time, only a minority of high school students can enter university which stood as the best authority in the Korean society. However, as time goes by, the university's gate was widened.

Today it is not an authority symbol but indispensable condition. Most high school students take for granted that university is an educational course, conscious of society did. Students' viewpoints about the objectives of the university also changed, the function of the university did, too. Changing the function of the university, lots of different problems were found different from the object of setting up a university. The ivory tower, the emblem of intelligence, degraded sole tools for employment. This phenomenon was prominent during the IMF (International Monetary Fund) bail-out crisis. Economic crisis in this country have a much influence on university society. To survive the cutthroat competition, both students and professors have made every endeavor.

Today, production of a competent person and useful studying become a university problem following social requirement. As time progress, the concept of university has changed, it will continue like the above.

What will be the true feature of the university in the new millenium?