It has been reported that according to the interim evaluation, results for Sungkyunkwan University (SKKU) and key regional national universities have improved significantly.

On Dec. 23, Ministry of education and National Research Foundation of Korea announced the preliminary results of the interim evaluation on Brain Korea 21 Plus (BK21+)s Plan.

Especially, unlike the first rounds of evaluation for BK21+ which was conducted in Aug. 2013, each university showed big differences and were greatly divided in the results.

In assessing each universities’ total number of selected project teams during the BK21+ interim evaluation, Seoul National University(SNU) showed a steady and strong performance (35 ->40), while the most remarkable result was SKKU where 10 were added to the already 21, making total of 31. Thanks to this, the overall ranking of SKKU,  based on the sum of selected project teams rose from 7th to 2nd place.

Among provincial national universities, Chungnam National University (CNU) leapt from 12th to 7th, almost doubling its number from 12 to 23.  Key provincial national universities such as Pusan National University(PNU) (total number 31, 2nd), Kyungpook National University(KNU) (total number 24, 6th), Chungnam National University (CNU) (total numer 23, 7th), Chonnam National University (JNU) (total number 21, 8th), and Chonbuk National University(JBNU) (total number 17, 10th) have shown good results, putting themselves in the top ten.

On the other hand, Korea University (KU) which was second in 2013 with 29, shrank to 27, placing it at 5th after PNU (total number 31) and Yonsei University (YU) (total number 28).

Meanwhile, to make the interim evaluations more impartial, the Ministry of Education conducted this Interim Evaluation in two stages. A total of 546 project teams were selected by having the top 50% of existing teams, 277 teams, retaining their status, 24 teams eliminated due to their significantly low assessment scores of less than 60% and 269 teams selected as Preliminary Selectee Project Teams, selected out of the 723 projects teams made up of the existing lower 50% teams and new entries.

Through this process a total of 23.3% were replaced by 127 competitive new entries. More specifically 14.2%, 38 project teams, of large-scale and 31.9%, 89 project teams, of small-scale were changed. 

The Ministry of Education plans to conduct site inspections for the Preliminary Selectee Project Teams until Jan. 2016, and if they spot project teams of false or deliberately miswritten information, those project teams will be eliminated.

Huh Jung, Head of the Talent Development Promotion Team in National Research Foundation of Korea, said “At the interim evaluation, budgets were reassessed even for the existing project teams.” Huh also added, “Exact budget for each university and business project will be announced on Feb. 2016, when confirmation notice is placed, after the end of the site inspections.”

In addition, the Ministry of Education will continuously conduct a consultation based annual inspection beyond 2016, to support the project teams’ long term vision development, and encourage enhancement in the quality and outcome of the study and research.

Link to media report: http://news.heraldcorp.com/view.php?ud=20151223000007