The government will push to allow employees of corporations and research institutes to concurrently serve as university professors by revising the law.
The Ministry of Education said on Apr. 7 that it will convene the 25th university regulation rationalization committee to discuss deregulation measures to support universities' autonomy and innovation.
The committee will pursue follow-up measures centered on items discussed at the 2026 regular general meeting of the Korean Council for University Education in March.
First, it will review expanding the scope of permissible leases of educational basic property such as campus sites to allow revenue generation through campus utilization and reducing fees for the use of national property to revitalize industry-academia-research cooperation. At the same time, it will streamline the hiring process for adjunct faculty and pursue follow-up measures to introduce dual affiliation for faculty.
In particular, it plans to establish a legal basis for dual affiliation so that outstanding talent from government-funded research institutes and corporations can be appointed as university faculty. To that end, it will push to amend the State Public Officials Act for Education and the Private School Act.
In addition, measures to ease regulations on the lecture ratio of full-time graduate school faculty and to abolish the prior consultation process required when establishing professional graduate schools were also included for review.
The Ministry of Education will reorganize the university regulation reform council into the university regulation rationalization committee. The aim is to boldly streamline unnecessary regulations and shift the policy stance to reasonably maintain necessary ones.
Choi Eun-ok, Vice Minister of the Ministry of Education, said, "The educational environment is changing rapidly due to the decline in the school-age population and the transition to artificial intelligence (AI)," and noted, "We will continue to pursue regulation rationalization that can be felt in the field so that universities can innovate autonomously."