SUNGKYUNKWAN UNIVERSITY (SKKU), SEOUL, KOREA
It has been reported that the results of the interim evaluation of Sungkyunkwan University (SKKU) and key regional national universities have improved significantly.
On Dec. 23, the Ministry of education and National Research Foundation of Korea announced the preliminary results of the interim evaluation of the Brain Korea 21 Plus (BK21+) Plan. Unlike the first rounds of the evaluation for BK21+ which were conducted in August of 2013, each university showed big differences and the results were greatly divided. In assessing each university's 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 which added 10 on top of its original 21 for a total of 31. The difference is primarily attributed to the overall ranking of SKKU which rose from 7th to 2nd place based on the sum of selected project teams.
On the other hand, Korea University which was second in 2013 with 29, shrank to 27, placing it at 5th after Pusan National University (total number 31) and Yonsei University (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 the existing 277 teams retain their status; 24 teams were eliminated due to significantly low assessment scores of less than 60%; 269 teams were selected as Preliminary Selectee Project Teams out of the 723 projects teams from the existing lower 50% as well as 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 with 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, "The exact budget for each university and business project will be announced on Feb. 2016 when the confirmation notice is made 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 their studies and research. "New pharmaceuticals are hard to develop in Korea with insufficient research and development funding. Increasing the efficiency of pre-existing medicine is our main research aim," said Prof. Park.
