In the Age of Generative AI, Why Do Korean Universities Still Feel Stuck in the 1990s?
A professor's lament about bureaucracy, innovation, and the gap between aspiration and reality
The Time Warp
It is January 2026 — a moment when generative artificial intelligence has become as ordinary as email — and yet the daily reality for many Korean professors still resembles a late-20th-century office ritual. Attendance logs are updated manually in spreadsheets. Counseling records are typed line by line. Research expenditures are reconciled by hand. Endless forms are filled out not because they illuminate anything, but because they satisfy an invisible bureaucracy.
The paradox runs deep: Korea has long prided itself on a national reflex of speed — ppalli-ppalli, faster, faster. Yet when the question is institutional redesign, the instinct flips. Change becomes slow. Caution becomes policy. New buildings rise, glossy and modern, while the administrative logic inside them remains hierarchical, procedural, and faintly suspicious of initiative. The shell is 21st century. The operating system is not.
The Global Contrast
Some universities elsewhere have begun to treat this mismatch as more than an annoyance. Stanford University substantially streamlined faculty hiring and promotion procedures beginning in May 2025, cutting out redundant documentation and decision layers and shortening the timeline by two to three months. Some review files that had exceeded 100 pages — occasionally reaching 400 — were pared down. Harvard's Faculty Workload Committee argued in a 2022 report that administrative work should be handled by specialized staff, eliminated where possible, or performed more efficiently.
Korean universities, however, often move in the opposite direction: offloading admissions management and administrative responsibilities onto professors while continuing to cling to a stubborn fantasy that professors must be omnipotent — simultaneously scholars, managers, compliance officers, and bureaucratic scribes. It is a form of institutional self-deception disguised as professionalism.
The Prestige Trap
Another distinct phenomenon is the competition to recruit "name-brand scholars." Universities work feverishly to add famous overseas academics to their brochures, but invest far less in building the internal systems that cultivate scholars from within. In the end, the institution may end up enlarging only the invited scholar's wallet, not its own intellectual ecosystem. This is not merely a public relations mistake; it is a misunderstanding of what a university is for — the production and transmission of knowledge, yes, but also the long-term development of intellectual capacity.
The Empty Campus Problem
And then there is the question of space. During school breaks, many campuses become empty cities. A Hubstar study found that more than 80 percent of university space is persistently unused. The situation in Korea is arguably worse: even during the semester, classrooms often peak only in the narrow window between 10 a.m. and 2 p.m.
So why can't students reserve underused campus rooms as effortlessly as they book an Airbnb? Technologically, there is no real barrier. The barrier is psychological — a managerial culture shaped by the fear of responsibility. What if something happens? Who will be accountable? In Korea's institutional imagination, these questions often function less as precautions and more as vetoes. Innovation doesn't fail because it is impossible; it fails because risk has been culturally coded as guilt.
The AI Paradox
The defining principle of education in the generative AI era is not automation for its own sake, but "human-in-the-loop." AI can process data and draft outputs, but the meaningful question — the ethical boundary, the interpretive leap, the creative judgment — still belongs to humans. Students already understand this. A 2025 survey by the UK's Higher Education Policy Institute reported that 92 percent of undergraduate students use AI tools. Students have moved on; the institution, in many cases, has not.
The Siloed Department Problem
Consider how knowledge is increasingly made. MIT's Media Lab has never been organized around rigid departmental walls. Engineers and artists build together; biologists and designers collaborate in the same rooms. Yet in many Korean universities, departmental boundaries remain as formidable as fortresses. Koreans, perhaps more than most, hold tightly to the identity of belonging — the department, the major, the "home." But the problems of the 21st century do not respect those boundaries. Climate change, AI ethics, and digital inequality require integrative thinking by default, not by exception.
The Missing Generations
The deeper question, though, may be demographic. Why must the university be a place where only people in their early 20s gather? In the United States, senior learning programs like the University of Kentucky's OLLI (Osher Lifelong Learning Institute) and Ohio State's Program 60 have expanded the notion of who belongs on campus. A student with 30 years of management experience debating with a 20-year-old undergraduate is not an inconvenience. It is diversity in its most intellectually productive form.
In Korea, seniors are largely absent from the campus ecosystem — not because they lack curiosity, but because social norms subtly police "age-appropriate behavior." The result is a university that speaks endlessly about diversity while quietly narrowing the range of lived experience inside its walls.
The International Student Paradox
International students face a similar kind of exclusion. Even as their numbers rise, student councils and clubs often remain Korean-only worlds. Meetings run entirely in Korean, and international students are treated as guests rather than members. Yet an AACSB report noted that institutions with internationally diverse doctoral programs tend to secure more patents and research funding. Diversity is not ornamental. It is an engine of innovation.
The Regional Lesson
Japan offers a cautionary parallel. The government has been pushing university governance reform through its 2025 Integrated Innovation Strategy, but the planned 2026 reform of the Science Council has become embroiled in controversy over academic autonomy. Korea and Japan share a pattern: government-led reform, standardized evaluation, loud rhetoric about globalization — and inward-facing systems that remain fundamentally closed. The potential exists. The system suppresses it.
The K-University Question
Which raises an uncomfortable question: Why are we so eager to imitate Stanford and MIT — and so hesitant to build something distinctly Korean? K-pop became a global phenomenon not by copying Western pop perfectly, but by refining a recognizable Korean identity into an exportable form. Where, then, is the "K-University"?
Korean universities do have strengths: fast decision-making in moments of urgency, deep collaborative energy, relentless work ethic, and a capacity for rapid execution. The tragedy is that these strengths are often trapped inside administrative systems that reward conformity over initiative. If Korea wants its universities to be globally attractive, it must design a model that fits its own cultural dynamism — not American laissez-faire, not Japanese traditional hierarchy, but something that harnesses Korea's intensity while updating its institutions for the century it is already living in.
The Inflection Point
We are at an inflection point. Generative AI is not simply another tool; it is a civilizational shift. If universities insist on preserving 20th-century systems during a 21st-century transformation, they will not remain centers of learning. They will become museums.
Students are already talking to AI, connecting with global scholars online, collaborating across borders. The university must rewrite itself accordingly. Let students reserve empty classrooms with their smartphones. Build multigenerational learning communities where seniors and undergraduates learn side by side. Treat international students as equal citizens of campus life, and make student governance genuinely multinational. Expand professional administrative staffing so professors can focus on scholarship and teaching. Invest in growing future scholars from within, rather than renting prestige from outside.
And above all, resist the reflex to follow Western elite models uncritically. Find Korea's own educational "export." Allow autonomy and voluntary experimentation. Control may produce order, but freedom produces creation. Koreans have repeatedly demonstrated extraordinary collective power in times of crisis. The university should not lag behind that national talent. It should be where the next transformation begins.
Sources
This article draws on the author's observations of Korean university administration and references the following institutions and reports:
- Stanford University. (2025). Faculty Hiring and Promotion Streamlining Initiative.
- Harvard University. (2022). Faculty Workload Committee Report.
- Hubstar. (2021). University Space Utilization Study.
- Higher Education Policy Institute (HEPI). (2025). Student Use of AI Tools Survey.
- AACSB. (2025). International Diversity and Research Productivity Report.
- University Press (UniPress). (2026). Korean University Reform Discussions
Written by Professor Seungchul Yoo, Ewha Womans University
