Present State of Engineering Education in Korea: Positioning in the World

抄録

Together with leaderless G-zero world, the main powers of world economic activity and the industrial structure is being rapidly changed and reorganized. The engineering education also has to position in this world changing to improve the nation′s competitiveness in global market. Anytime-anywhere mobile internet accessibility has made the private ownership of knowledge change to the good of the common people. Thus, the education of engineering, which creates values and goods from the knowledge and technology, focuses on glowing global leading engineers who can make the creative knowledge production by reorganizing existing units. For the vigorous interchanges of knowledge, the construction of open-source based on open-platform is essentially demanded. South Korea’ s National Statistics Office found that about 99% of Koreans expect to have a higher degree than Associate. This high demand for tertiary education has been a driving force nurturing Korean engineering education in both a quantitative and qualitative way. However, relevant statistics indicate that the change in educational circumstances-such as the reorganization of the industrial structure, the advent of new technologies, and the expectation of the population decreasing-requires new strategies to strengthen and substantialize engineering education. To address the future direction of Korean engineering education, major activities of engineering bodies are investigated, namely, (1) developing specialized engineering educational programs and methods, (2) strengthening academic-industrial cooperation, and (3) improving the education evaluation system and administrative system. The current Korean government’ s objective in higher education can be simplified in three aspects: (1) to reinforce educational competitiveness, (2) to raise the autonomy of education institutions, and (3) to nurture research competencies. As for educational institutions, three aspects of their efforts and achievements to develop customized engineering education systems reflecting regional characteristics will be presented in three aspects: educational program, teaching method, and education evaluations. Additionally, activities of the Accreditation Board for Engineering Education of Korea to ensure the quality of education programs will be described. At last, the Korean Society for Engineering Education is introduced to emphasize its role in improving and maintaining the engineering educational system.