Education Ministry signs Letter of Intent on educational partnership with KMK, Germany. 

Hwang Woo-yeo, Minister of Education, and KMK (Kultusminister Konferenz), a state-government consultative body for education and culture ministers in Germany, on 24 last month signed a Letter of Intent for bilateral cooperation in the field of education, in Seoul. Germany is a federal government whose education ministry of 16 states has exclusive rights on education by establishing and managing KMK for ministers of education and culture since 1948 for coordinating educational policies made in each state government. The Education Ministry said that this closing of LOI with KMK, a follow-up of President Park Geun-hye’s tour of Germany last March, would accelerate the cooperation in the field of education with Germany, which has a solid system of vocational education with a long tradition and history to make success at 1990 unification and social integration thereafter. Main contents of cooperation include exchanging students, teachers and specialists in the field of unification and history to learn the post-unification experience of successful social integration, exchanging teachers between Meister School and Specialized High School to experience advanced vocational skills instruction and build up global employment capability. Finally, junior college students’ field trips at vocational school and enterprise in Germany. Especially, as the first cooperative project under the LOI, there will be <Korea-Germany Unification (history) Education Forum> in Berlin, Germany, on October 16, for specialists of both countries to discuss the development plans in this field. In an interview with Dorgerlor, KMK vice president and minister of education and culture at Jacksen Anhalt state of Germany, who visited to sign the LOI, Minister Hwang said, “It is 25 years since the collapse of the Berlin Wall and the post-unification success in social integration through education gives many lessons and suggestions.” He also said that on the opportunity of this LOI, he expected a practical, concrete and active cooperation between the two countries in the fields of unification/history education and vocational education. 

Ministry of Education reports ‘Plan on rearing creative local talents from provincial universities’ to a Cabinet council.

Hwang Woo-yeo, Minister of Education, declared that he had discussed ‘Rearing plan for creative local talents through increasing competitiveness of provincial universities’ at a Cabinet meeting on 30 last month. The ministry prepared a ‘Plan for rearing provincial universities’ (Nov. 2013) in an effort to ‘expand support for provincial universities,’ a core national agenda under Park Geun-hye administration and is pushing for the policies without a hitch by enacting ‘Provincial University Rearing Act’ (Jan 2014), etc. However, it is expected that internal and external circumstances around provincial universities are going to worsen continuously, such as decrease in admission resources. Thus, they are planning to drive plans on converting into positive policies of absorbing a new demand through attracting excellent foreign students and lifelong vocational education, moving further than the existing rearing policy for provincial universities. Through this, they are expecting creative assets (knowledge, technology), ideas and superior talents to pull local creative economy, he said. First, they are planning to strengthen the role of provincial universities by supporting the specialization of provincial universities, business/startup of creative assets and rearing research personnel for local smaller enterprises. 

‘Centering on the specialization of provincial universities,’ they will continue to focus on rearing excellent departments into prestigious ones second to the Metropolitan area, while supporting provincial universities in poor circumstances to build up together in competitiveness in connection and cooperation with ‘leading provincial university’ so that they may not die out. In the future, the ministry will give all out to proceed with the current projects so that provincial universities may act a leading role as an outpost for local creative economy. They are also planning to keep excavating related policies through ‘a consultative body for rearing provincial universities and local talents’ to be composed and operated at the yearend.