A Study On The University Governance In Korea

University governance has increasingly become a concern in the field of higher education worldwide. Against the background of globalization, internationalization and marketization, also with the influential ideologies, such as New Public Managerialism, governments began to make the transition from full-service governments to efficient ones, which make the governments released from the public sectors gradually and place emphasis on the market’s role in the public services. As an important part of state public policy, university has also been affected by this macro-environment.After the Second World War, Korea is one of the countries in which higher education experienced fast expansion. Korea has paid close attention to the western theory and practice of governance in universities, and especially the 1990s’higher education reform with evident color of New Public Managerialism, has decentralized the central government’s power to the universities, emphasizing the introduction of competitive market mechanisms and providing demander-centered education. Although Korean universities have been influenced by state authoritarianism for a long time and controlled by government much, and the degree of the autonomy is not high, Korea has obtained some successful experiences and failing lessons in the process of balancing the stakeholders’responsibilities, power and interests in the universities in order to enhance competitiveness of the universities.This dissertation is concerned essentially with the university governance at the national-level (external governance) and the university’s internal governance. The national-level university governance and university’s internal governance refer mainly three primary participants: government, university and market factors. The national-level university governance aims to resolve the problem related to the relationship between government and the universities, while university’s internal governance pays more attention to university’s internal matters. As a means of state regulation and a measure by which university can gain more financial supports, market plays an important role in both levels of university governance. Thus, this dissertation uses Burton Clark’s famous Triangle model as the basic analysis framework. As regards the aspect of national-level university governance, this dissertation examines state (government) and market’s influence on the university. On the other hand, university’s internal governance aims to probe into the process of decision-making inside the university, which explores the responsibilities and interactions among different interest groups, such as university board, headmaster, university senate and faculty meeting. This dissertation contains six parts including an introduction. The introduction consists of the statement of the problem, review of the literature, key concepts, content of the study, the research methods and the significance of this study. The first chapter provides the rationale basis of university governance. According to the existing governance theories, this chapter defines the conception of governance and university governance in this dissertation. The second chapter examines the ideological transformation of Korean university governance. It mainly probes into how university governance ideas transform in different stages, as well as the influence of government policies’change on university governance. Governance idea determines the university’s governance structure directly. This chapter also supplies the basis for the following chapters which discuss Korean university’s external and internal governance structures. The third, fourth and fifth chapters focus on Korean university’s external and internal governance structure. The third chapter analyzes the influence of government on university from the conflict between the government’s control and university’s autonomy; the fourth chapter analyzes the influence of market on university from the way and effect of the market (including all the impact forces except government) influencing the university; the fifth chapter analyzes the process of decision-making inside the university and its effect. The sixth chapter offers the reflection of Korean university governance. This final chapter summarizes the features of Korean university governance, and at the same time, in accordance with the characteristics of Korean social developmental model, explores how to reconstruct the relationship of university, government and market so as to enhance the quality of universities in the context of state-directed market economy.