Seoul National University

4th International Exhibition and Conference
on Higher Education (IECHE)

Keynote Speech

OH Yeon-Cheon
President
Seoul National University

Honorable members of the Ministry of Education and the academic community of Saudi Arabia and distinguished guests,

Thank you very much for bestowing the honor to deliver the keynote speech on this momentous occasion. It gives me great pleasure to stand in front of you, here in Saudi Arabia, to share my thoughts about the role of higher education institutions in fostering social responsibility in students and graduates.

Universities today increasingly globalized and with globalization, standards are becoming more and more unified across the world, not only in terms of academic excellence, but also in terms of achievements and values. Due to increasing global competition and the need to conform to global standards, we witness by day the growing standardization of academic achievements, where more importance is put on quantitative growth. Accordingly, more focus is put on research, rather than education, and as less focus is put on education, students are becoming more alienated from their professors than ever. As a result, we are seeing a decoupling of teaching and learning that has consequently led to a growing number of students who are more interested in searching for high-income steady jobs rather than developing their inner qualities and intellectual growth. In short, what is happening in higher education institutions around the world is a strong spread of individualism, where compiling personal, quantifiable achievements that will give a competitive edge to survive in the increasing competitive world are considered of supreme value.

Facing these changes, higher education institutions are encountering difficulty in finding a balance in developing itself and its members according tothe global standard and defining their identities true to their fundamental roles. In this regard, it is my belief that it is a time like this that higher education institutions must revisit their original mission statements and reconstruct their identities to fit the challenges arising from changing global trends.

Through my personal experience as a professor in Korea and through my visits to various universities within Korea and around the world as President of Seoul National University, I found that it is possible to categorize universities into three large groups according to their roles. The first group is world-oriented universities which focus on global issues and basic research, whose role is to provide a foundation for human development by strengthening academic research and education on liberal arts rather than disciplinary knowledge.The second group is national-oriented universities that focus on national issues and conduct pure and applied research to provide disciplinary subject knowledge necessary for national development. In these universities, naturally, focus on education is on disciplinary knowledge rather than liberal arts. The third and last group is local-oriented universities whose role is to provide knowledge for civic and community development focusing on local issues.

In case of Seoul National University, as the first national university of Korea, we have been mainly a national-oriented university whose role has been so far to provide academic support and knowledge that will enhance the development of our nation. However, with the changing trends of society and increasing globalization, we have been making the transition in our identity from a national-oriented university to a world-oriented university to meet the new challenges presented to us. Now, Seoul National University aims to become a world-oriented university and has been putting effort to internationalize its constitution over the past decade. Under this new vision, Seoul National University has changed its mission from fostering national leaders to global leaders, from pursuing national values to fundamental human values and global welfare, from focusing on disciplinary knowledge to creative wisdom.

It is my belief that the goal of higher education institutions is to foster talented young people who will contribute to the greater humanity and harmony in the world, their nations, and their communities. Whether the institution be world-oriented, national-oriented, or local-oriented, this goal stands true to all universities. Although universities may differ in their capacities and the spheres in which they aim to exert their efforts, we must all strive to develop a strong sense of social justice within our students, so that they are able to see beyond their own individual needs, wants, and goals. Graduates of higher education institutions must be armed with a firm value system that is capable of detecting what is fair and what is not, what must be done and what must be prevented, and how this can be done with creativity that allows actions to result in greater results than resources delimit.

The topic of this conference – the social responsibility of graduates and how higher education institutions can foster social responsibility – is a very important issue of our present age, and I hope that we will be able to share deep insights on how this can be achieved and present a direction for positive change to universities around the world. It is my understanding the Saudi Arabia has great interest in innovation in education and promoting its existing institutions into world-oriented universities. I also am very much aware that Saudi Arabia boasts of great advances in research recently. With great expectations on the successful conclusion of the 4th International Exhibition and Conference on Higher Education (IECHE), I look forward to observing more development in Saudi Arabia’s education in ways that will present new paradigms and models to countries and universities around the world, and I deeply thank the government of Saudi Arabia for this great opportunity.

Thank you for your attention.