Day 12- Fulbright Korea Final Day in Seoul

After visiting 14 universities and engaging in a variety of cultural and historical activities around Korea during the past two weeks, the inevitable moment arrived for us to wind down our program. Late Thursday evening, we returned to Seoul via KTX train from Busan, and reported the next morning to the Fulbright Korea office. We would spend our final day processing all that we’d experienced during our time in Korea, and sharing our reflections with our Fulbright coordinators.

Before delving into our group’s reflections, it is important to recognize the role of our Fulbright coordinators in facilitating an educational, impactful and hospitable experience in Korea. While we were all familiar with the Fulbright name and the quality programming it provides, a majority of our group had spent little to no time in Korea and were pleasantly surprised by how thoughtful, attentive and accommodating our Fulbright hosts were, as well as the host country at-large. As is customary in Korean culture, we provided our hosts with gifts that represented our respective universities and/or U.S. States.

In our final group reflection session, we shared our individual and overall takeaways about Korean Higher Education, the Fulbright IEA Korea program design, and our experience in Korea in general.

We observed a high demand for international students within the Korean university system, due to the country’s declining population of native Korean school-aged students. Moreover, we were impressed by the quality of the higher education system in a highly developed country, relative to the extremely low cost of tuition (by U.S. standards) due to government regulation on tuition rates. We also learned that there are many scholarships and funding options available for international students as compared with the U.S.

From a policy level, Korean universities are incentivized to retain their international students, and the trickle-down effect we observed is that many universities appeared to dedicate themselves to ensuring international student success and retention. This took a variety of forms, from reducing barriers to entry at the government level (i.e. securing visas) and at the university level.? Many of the universities were establishing an increasing number of English Track curriculums and majors, while others allowed flexible admission, by giving admitted students a few semesters to demonstrate proficiency in Korean. Finally, the number of thriving international buddy programs, mentoring opportunities, and other intercultural activities, demonstrated a commitment to ensuring that international students are able integrate with Korean classmates and within the larger community.?

Given the above, we agreed that Korea is well-poised to be a leading destination country for international students from around the globe, and has the potential to leverage their growing cultural relevance to their advantage. However, where there are opportunities there are also challenges. During this trip, we learned about “convergence”, a concept which seeks to prepare the workforce to be ready to adapt in a rapidly changing world. In Korea, this approach is also applied in a higher education setting, and many Korean universities operate on a rotation system ensuring that all university administrators gain broad and generalized experience across many administrative functions of the university. ?

By contrast, in the U.S., the field of International Education has been on the rise for the past two decades, meaning that higher education practitioners are becoming increasingly specialized as international educators. Through this approach, U.S. universities attempt to tap into the skills of experienced administrators to carry out strategic internationalization efforts, develop global relationships, sustain global partnerships, and understand international student and scholar populations. It will be interesting to observe how Korea manages increasing internationalization in a system that operates through broad and versatile skill sets versus the U.S. model of specialization.

We also recognized that as Korea makes available unbeatable opportunities for the current generation of international students to arrive, thrive and potentially remain in the country for work, this may impact the country over time. During the cultural parts of our Fulbright program, we learned about the impressive strength, resilience and adaptability of the Korean people throughout centuries of outside invasion, while maintaining a strong sense of tradition, culture and identity.? However, globalization and internationalization take a different shape, and it will be interesting to see how Korea adapts with the intentional increase of international students throughout their higher education institutions.

I also attended the program with the goal of learning more about Korean culture to better support students at my institution, as Korea is the third largest sending country to the U.S. Some of my takeaways include a better understanding of the Korean mindset around education. At the national level, Korea is invested in education as a resource, developing highly-skilled manpower in a country that lacks natural resources for export. On a more individual level, we learned that Korean families are willing to invest significantly in their children's education, and that English language instruction is highly sought after. However, high scores on English proficiency tests don't imply that Korean students will be immediately successful in a U.S. classroom environment, because often they lack opportunities to practice speaking casually with native English speakers. We learned that Korea is a high context culture, and students may feel less comfortable communicating in English (which does not require different communication styles depending on the age and experience level of the person you are speaking with).

We also came to understand that classroom instruction in Korea is still very much presentation and memorization-based, rather than the more informal discussion-style format used in the U.S. We learned about the two-year military service requirement before age 32 for all male students, which many choose to pursue in the midst of their university undergrad experience. And finally, that the mentality of many Korean students is to try to attend the highest-ranked university and get the highest possible grades, as they believe it will determine their long-term career outcomes (Korean companies generally hire students with the best grades from the best universities). There is not as much focus on attending university based on learning style, specialized interests, and "best fit", as there is in the U.S.

?We ended our last day with remarks from the Executive Director of Fulbright Korea, as well as a debrief and networking happy hour at the Fulbright office. In attendance were some of our Korean university hosts from the past two weeks, as well as some of our Korean counterparts in the KIEA program. It was great to have the opportunity to connect with them again.

I am leaving the Fulbright IEA South Korea program with a deep appreciation for a country I’d never visited before and for the wonderful Korean colleagues who hosted us during our visit, new insights into the Korean higher education system, fun memories with the 7 amazing U.S. colleagues that joined me on the program, and renewed enthusiasm for the work I do to facilitate international exchange experiences for others.

And thanks to the three months I spent studying Korean on Duolingo, I can bring this blog series to a close with a “Kamsa-Hanmida” (thank you) and “Annyonghi ?Kaseyo” (goodbye)!