1960년대 근대화 정책과 대학

The Modernization Policy of the Universities in the 1960s

In the 1960s, the “modernization” process of the universities was led by the government, which maintained tight control upon all the Private universities and pushed forward a strategy designed to boost the development of human resources in areas like science and engineering. The University management system created by the military Park Jeong-hi regime went through numerous controversies (“autonomous functions of the university versus state control”), but after the mid-1960s a “Control & Support” strategy was initiated, and all the universities either national or public or private, were all encouraged (or demanded) to raise scientific and engineering personnel, through post graduate schools and research institutes. In the 1960s, the universities continued to lose their respective identities and became rather ‘homogenized’, by the state-initiated modernization strategy and the directions for research and education laid out by such strategy. The University power, mostly composed of the private schools, did not have enough resources or momentum to survive the rapid wake of modernization enabled by economic growth. They all had to fall behind, and the state which had both a ‘carrot’ and a ‘stick’, “controled and supported” the universities at the same time, and led the reformation of the universities, so that they could raise and train human resources in the areas of science and technology, which was what the government was in need of. As we can see, the “university modernization” of the 1960s was initiated and proceeded upon the mutual needs of both the state and the university power. The universities today, which tend to follow the state’s education and academism policies in order to secure more funding, instead of trying to earn respect as an academic community, seem to have come from the 1960s, when the state power was relentlessly pursuing modernization in all areas of the country.