Days 2 & 3- Fulbright Visits to Seoul & Incheon Area Universities (+ Soccer!)

And we're off! It's no surprise that Fulbright has kept our group of International Educators moving at a fast clip! Throughout the course of our two-week program, we will visit a total of 14 Korean universities. On day two of the program, we kicked off the first of those visits to Sungkyul University and Seoul National University, followed by visits to Inha University and Incheon National University on day three.

At all of the universities we visited, we met with representatives from various International Offices, such as International Affairs, Global Education & Exchanges, Admissions, and International Support & Services. We covered a number of topics, ranging from Internationalization of Korean Universities, Diversity and "Human Rights" in the Korean Higher Ed context, English language issues, and Counseling and Support services for International Students. These informational sessions were coupled with walking tours of each campus, along with the opportunity to meet both international as well as Korean students at each university.

At both Sungkyul and Incheon National Universities, we were greeted by one of our Korean counterparts- recent former participants in the Korean International Education Administrator’s Program (KIEA) program who visited universities in the U.S. earlier this year, in a program similar to ours. During all four campus visits, we engaged in interesting and engaging discussions with our hosts.

To summarize a few of our many takeaways, we learned that opportunities to study English are highly valued in Korea, with some parents investing in English classes for their children from an early age. However, we talked about how high scores on standardized English tests do not always equate to advanced language abilities, and that many Korean students still face challenges with the language due to lack of opportunities to practice English with native speakers outside of a classroom setting. Meanwhile, we learned that Korea is equally invested in ensuring that its international students strive to learn Korean. Rather than determining employment eligibility and duration based on academic calendars, academic programs and majors as we do in the U.S., Korea requires international students to take the TOPIK (Test of Proficiency in Korean) in a system that allows a greater number of work hours the higher the test score.

Our hosts also shared that there is a limit on the amount of tuition that universities in Korea can charge to domestic students. Delving further into that topic, we discovered that while in the U.S. our students shoulder the financial burden of high tuition, in Korea the universities shoulder more of the burden and must find innovative ways to thrive. We were impressed by each university's investment and support for the international students on their campuses and by Korea's overall openness to easing the way for international students to arrive and thrive there. We also heard first-hand experiences of students from Vietnam, Myanmar, Thailand, Uzbekistan and France. We were very interested to learn about strategic international partnerships and even thriving global campuses held by some of the Korean universities in other countries.

We ended our first day of meetings with a night out at the Seoul World Cup Stadium (pictured at the heading of this article), watching Korea beat China (1-0) in a World Cup qualifier game, and learned to chant "Dae-han Min-guk" with the locals!

And at the end of our second day of meetings today, we visited Songdo Central Park in the Incheon Free Economic Zone, rode to the 33rd floor of the G-Tower skyscraper building for a bird's eye view of the area, and took a fascinating tour for a language nerd like me, at the National Museum of World Writing Systems.