Abstract:

Universities in South Korea establishes popularity and generalization of higher education which has no parallel over the world, and played a role of locomotive of the national economy. However, compared to a rapid progress of quantity improvement, it is estimated that a quality level is relatively low. Hence the government strives ways to obtain university competitiveness by multiple university support projects; Brain Korea 21project in 1999 and WCU. Despite all these efforts, does universities in South Korea acquire competitiveness? Especially it raises a question of whether we can refer them as research-oriented universities. Due to concentration of government financial support toward certain university that is noted for its research-oriented system, rest of other institutes begin to perceive the university as a representative example and concentrates on imitating the universities' system.

Then what is the current category of universities in South Korea? Even though a type and definition of universities are classified by various institutes such as the Carnegie Foundation, Seoul National University research team, Science & Technology Policy Institution, and Samsung economic research laboratory, there are no further empirical studies and no discussion addressing a developmental strategy as a future plan.

As a step toward establishing an empirical segmentation of universities in South Korea, the study will focus on universities' attributes: education, research and university-industry collaboration. Furthermore, by presenting specific strategies to achieve competitiveness for each attribute, the study contributes to further enhancement of universities in South Korea and strategic promotion of government financial projects.

Keywords:

Universities in South Korea, segmentation, Competitiveness.