THE RECENT general investigation of Yonsei University by the Ministry of Education (MOE) has placed the school’s hiring practices under heavy scrutiny, particularly with regards to the issue of academic inbreeding. Academic inbreeding, a practice by which a university shows favoritism towards its former graduates in its hiring selection process, is generally considered to be harmful to the development of an academic institution. Studies have linked its development to unfair power dynamics between senior and junior faculty members and stunted levels of creativity. The report by the MOE, released in July of this year, revealed that Yonsei hired alumni in excess of the two-thirds faculty limit imposed by the Public Education Officials Act in 12 different departments. However, while the issue of academic inbreeding may come as a surprise to outside observers, it has been an open secret for many years. Academic inbreeding has been difficult to combat, and it has lingered throughout the years despite efforts by MOE and Yonsei.

Academic inbreeding in Korea

   Academic inbreeding in Korea is an effect of historical and structural factors of Korea’s education system. Korea currently stands as one of the most educated countries in the world; in 2019, 67.8% of eligible students have enrolled in universities compared to the OECD average of 44%*. However, this is a relatively recent development. The Korean education system has undergone explosive growth since the country achieved independence in 1945, going from only having 19 universities with a combined enrollment of 7,819 students to having 255 universities with over a million students by the 1980s**.

   Universities were unprepared to handle the rapid expansion and suffered severe shortages of postdoctoral students qualified to educate the populace; in 1983, the percentage of faculty who held doctoral degrees was only at 40%. This shortage of educated academic elites was a key determinant in the development of academic inbreeding among the nation’s top universities. As Professor Hugo Horta (Prof., University of Hong Kong) explains in his 2010 study on academic inbreeding, “in order for a university to achieve the status of a national elite university, it needs to quickly build up better research and teaching capabilities than other universities…[for which] they tend to hire their own doctorates”***. This tendency explains the historically high rate of academic inbreeding among the top three research universities in Korea. The national average of academic inbreeding is 25%, but it is 89% at Seoul National, 77% at Yonsei, and 61% at Korea University.

Ingrained culture is the culprit

   Since then, the government has attempted to ameliorate the situation with the Public Education Officials Act of 2005, which limits the percentage of the alumni in individual university departments to two-thirds of the entire faculty. The government has also made open recruiting mandatory under the Private University Law to improve the transparency of faculty employment. Recruitment posts are public and easily accessible through websites like hibrain.com, and academic appointment committees are required to maintain “objective and fair” evaluations of all applicants by complying with MOE regulations.

   While there is a clear historical reasoning for academic inbreeding, this still does not explain how the problem has persisted in the fifteen years since the Public Education Officials Act was passed. It is not simply a matter of corruption as, apart from the two-thirds restriction, Yonsei University departments overwhelmingly conform to the regulation requirements on academic appointments. The recent general investigation confirms this fact, having produced only two accounts of irregularities regarding MOE regulations in its evaluation of faculty appointment records from 2016 to 2019.

   Instead, many scholars and policymakers suspect that culture poses the biggest barrier to change. A study conducted in 2016 points out that despite increased transparency in the academic appointments, the “culture of faculty hiring has not changed much [in Korea]”****. Due to the famously competitive nature of the university entrance exam, Korean academia places a great deal of emphasis on the university from which students receive their bachelor’s degrees. This is also linked to the importance of hak-maek, one’s academic network. The same study also found that the cultural biases of academia can lead universities to prefer their own alumni over others due to an emphasis on “[reinforcing] organizational traditions and academic cultures.” The preference works both ways; the study notes that “professors… can have a strong desire to [become] professors in their home universities due to a strong sense of affiliation for their [alma mater].” In an interview with The Yonsei Annals, a professor from Hongik University remarked that “most professors [in Korea] prefer to work at the university they studied in.” The reasons, she felt, were wide-ranging, from “cultural familiarity to the [relative] ease of receiving tenure.”

Difficulties in combating academic inbreeding

   Lowering the rate of academic inbreeding comes with numerous challenges, one of which is that there is no definitive consensus on whether academic inbreeding negatively impacts academic quality. The aforementioned 2016 study disputes the notion that academic inbreeding is inherently harmful by demonstrating that there is no significant difference between inbred and non-inbred professors in terms of the quantity of research output. In fact, most professors who receive their bachelor’s degrees at top universities in Korea tend to receive their postgraduate degrees abroad and will have a broad academic exposure beyond their undergraduate experience. The study cautions against the belief that academic inbreeding is incompatible with meritocracy, and states that strong hak-maek is not necessarily a barrier to improvement within academia.

   In 2009, The Yonsei Annals published “Yonsei Faculty: Away from Uniformity, Towards Diversity,” reflecting positively on the trend of increasing diversity in the academic background of the university’s staff. The article notes a marked 20% increase in the employment of non-Yonsei alumni during spring 2007 to fall 2009, crediting the university for taking a major step towards internationalization. Since then, however, academic diversity has seen little improvement.

   Of greater concern is the persistence of established power dynamics and hierarchies within academia even after internal policy changes at Yonsei. Until 2014, Yonsei required Underwood International College (UIC) faculty members to be post-PhDs with no degrees from Yonsei. It was this decision in 2006 that accounted for the sudden spike in non-Yonsei faculty members cited in the 2009 Annals article. Not only has there been little progress made on faculty inbreeding since then, but the increased number of foreign faculty has created its own problems.

   A study published in 2016 on UIC, noted that such policy resulted in the “systemic disempowerment” of foreign professors who felt “isolated” from the rest of the university community*****. Even after being hired as faculty, the study notes that new professors faced difficulties trying to integrate into the “established hierarchies…[between] faculty members who graduated from the same university.” This hierarchy is evident in the structure of the UIC today, with top administrative positions filled almost entirely by professors who graduated from Yonsei. This is in part due to the fact that most UIC professors are young and are “keeping an eye out for employment prospects outside of South Korea,” seeing professorship in Yonsei as temporary employment.

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   The recent MOE investigation creates the possibility that academic inbreeding will be taken more seriously again. The twelve heads of departments who have violated articles of Public Education Officials Act were given academic warnings, and the university has been ordered to update the MOE on their progress in addressing issues in the report. However, lukewarm efforts in the past and their weaknesses suggests that there may be a need for more creative and bold strategies to improve the status quo.

*OECD Education at a Glance 2019

**Shin J.C., Jung J., Lee S.J. (2016) Academic Inbreeding of Korean Professors: Academic Training, Networks, and their Performance

***Horta, H., Sato, M. & Yonezawa, A. Academic inbreeding: exploring its characteristics and rationale in Japanese universities using a qualitative perspective.

****Shin J.C., Academic Inbreeding of Korean Professors

*****Kim, S.K., 2016. Western faculty ‘flight risk’ at a Korean university and the complexities of internationalisation in Asian higher education.