Stony Brook University SUNY Korea

Engineering Education in South Korea by the Numbers During the past few decades, South Korea has experienced the highest economic growth in the shortest time ever seen in modern world history.  This growth was accomplished by investing in Heavy and Chemical Industries (HCI) during the 1970s, followed by the development of high technology-focused industries. At the time, the country lacked adequate engineering educational institutions to support such growth. As a result, the main body of research institutions (such as the Korean Institute of Science and Technology), which provided support for high tech industries, consisted of researchers with Ph.D. training from abroad.         The history of contemporary science and engineering education in Korea dates to the early 1900s. Ten engineering students on the college level graduated in 1918 and four more students in mathematics and physics graduated in 1919. The first Bachelor’s degrees, which consisted of one in physics, four in mechanical engineering, two in metallurgical engineering, five in electrical engineering, and two in chemical engineering were awarded in 1943.           Today university education and research in Korea are quite diverse. The university entrance rate (percentage of high school graduates who enter higher education institutions) increased from 33% (1990) to 68.2 % (2014) and 71.5 % (2021). Despite this increase in rate, the university enrollment numbers have dropped from a peak of 2.13 million in 2014 to 1.93 million students in 2021. Korea's ranking with regard to published SCI journals went up from 34th (1990) to 12th (2015) out of 180 countries.           In 2021, there were around 202 universities and 134 community colleges in Korea. There were also a large number of other higher education institutions such as industrial universities, graduate universities, and graduate schools that are unaffiliated with a university. One hundred sixty (160) universities offered at least one undergraduate engineering program.           In 2019, more than 571,000 undergraduate students were enrolled in engineering programs.  Computer Science and Engineering with 45,654 and Mechanical Engineering with 44,703 had the two highest enrollments. The population of Korea is approximately 16% of the US, however the number of undergraduate engineering students in Korea was 61% of 622,550 engineering students in the US.  Similarly, more than 30,000 Master’s and 18,000 Ph.D. students were enrolled in engineering programs in Korea in 2019. These were 32% and 22 % respectively of those in the US.         More than 81,300 BS engineering and computer science degrees were awarded in Korea in 2019. This was close to 42% of the 191,336 BS engineering degrees that were awarded in the US.  In Korea, the highest percentage of degrees (12.5%) was awarded in mechanical engineering with computer science and engineering a close second at 12.1%. In the US. mechanical engineering and computer science comprised 22.5 % and 29% respectively of the total degrees.           Engineering profession and education have historically been male-dominated and despite some progress in recent years, they continue to be so. For example, in the US, women earned 21.9 % of bachelor’s degrees, 26.7% of master’s degrees, and 23.6% of doctoral degrees in engineering in 2019. The disciplines where women earned over 40% of the bachelor’s degrees in were environment engineering, biological/agricultural engineering, and biomedical engineering.         In Korea, in 2019, 23% (5, 18,745) of BS degrees were awarded to women. The highest percentage of engineering BS degrees awarded to women was in Architectural Engineering (41.5%) and the lowest in Mechanical Engineering (9.5%). The numbers for MS degrees awarded to women were 2,781 out of 13,722 (20%) and 507 out of 4,217 (12%) for Doctoral degrees.         From 385,350 enrolled engineering undergraduates in Korea in 2019, about 1.5% or 5,860 were international students.  The numbers for MS and Doctoral degrees were 2,599 out of 30,342 (8.5%) and 2,621 out of 17,986 (14.5%).  Computer science and engineering and mechanical engineering are the two top choices for international students.           Despite recent decreases in the numbers, US remains the top destination for international students. The number of international students in US universities dropped by 15% from a peak of 1.1 million in 2019 to 914000 in 2020/21. In 2019, About 21% or close to 230,000 of them were studying engineering.  This represents 29% of over 795,000 students in undergraduate and graduate engineering programs in the US.   In 2018, 10.5 %, 57.1% and 56.3% of BS, MS and Ph.D. engineering degrees in the US were awarded to international students.           Over 39,000 Korean students studied in the US during the 2020/21 academic year. This is 12 % less than close to 49,800 in 2019/20 and represents close to 4.2% of the total international students in the US. Korea is ranked third after China and India. The influx of Korean students adds close to $2.3 billion to the US economy each year.         During the past few decades, Korea has achieved eye-opening progress, producing significant quantitative growth and increased quality in engineering education. However, recent trends lead by the decline of the school-age population and the shift towards a creative economy calls for urgent qualitative and quantitative research focused on reform of universities to meet the needs of the country.       Click here to read the article        

SUNY Korea Admissions’ Speech at Annual Conference of Korean Association of International Educators in Jeju ​ SUNY Korea Admissions was invited to speak at the 22nd Annual Conference of the Korean Association of International Educators at the Oriental Hotel in Jeju Island on January 13, 2022. ​ KIM Kyuseok (Mick), admissions team leader, led the session themed as ‘Investor-Centered Strategies for Successful International Recruitment’, speaking about the international students and recruitment trend between the U.S. and South Korea, particularly in the context of the pandemicdriven transformation in the global higher education. He also discussed the value-centered approaches in international student recruitment and enrollment to maximize the return on investment from students’ and parents’ perspectives. ​ It was the first opportunity for SUNY Korea, as the first and the most prominent American higher educational institution established in South Korea, to share its 10-year experiences and the ideas of innovating transnational higher education with the international educators and professionals of the Korean colleges at the conference.     Read more

How to prepare to get a job in a Global Company-Based on the case in SUNY Korea     Recently, Korean global companies are gradually increasing, and the companies’ globalization is accelerating.     Korea's five largest groups such as Samsung, LG, SK,  Hanwha, Naver, and Kakao, these big tech and bio companies are expanding into global companies. It is time to look back on whether Korean universities, which have changed their status as global companies, are still thinking of Korean enterprises as local companies and are providing easy job guidance to students.     SUNY Korea is a school that has the strength in finding  a job in global companies. Professor Sunghyun Sean Lee, the Team Leader of the SUNY Korea's Career Development Team, talked about what needs to be done to prepare for a job in a global company.     Read More  

AI and job interviews: Leveling the playing field   Written by Chihmao HSIEH     In the recent last few years, artificial intelligence has been implemented to handle some of the filtering processes involved in assessing job interviews. A growing number of companies is requiring job applicants to answer questions online via video camera, whereby computer programs then process the video clips and audio transcripts. Assessments of facial expressions, eye movements, voice intonation, and word choice are combined to come up with sets of scores for each applicant.  For now, it appears that most of the companies using this technology are using it only for the initial cut, thus capable of filtering applications easily from tens of thousands to mere dozens. Some AI interview software works by having current employees answer the questions on video, and then evaluating the candidates on how well they match those employees.     The criticism has been swift and wide-ranging. Besides the obvious criticisms related to tying voice intonation and facial expressions to personality or expected job performance, applicants also express unfairness about the unilateral nature of AI interviews, where applicants are unable to correct an AI’s perception in the same way that they can correct a human interviewer while face-to-face. Career development staff at universities lament that AI doesn’t know how to comprehend applicants’ value systems, or appreciate the work motivations stemming from their aspirations or passion. Researchers have found that AI systems are prone to making decisions that reflect racism or sexism, and have called to regulate AI to ensure transparency and accountability. AI also has severely limited ability to recognize humor, which is valuable within creative, entrepreneurial organizations. As a result, some companies such as Korea Airports Corp. have gotten rid of AI interviews because managers were unsure exactly how and what the AI were evaluating. Overall, policymakers have asked whether the cost savings offered by this technology are worth discounting this much of human value and dignity.     As with many technological advances, there are tradeoffs in using AI to assess job interviews.  At the surface, the cost savings are obvious and significant. As communication technology improves and more work goes remote, the physical boundaries of the workplace will open up. HR managers become less confined in recruiting from a local labor market, and companies can benefit from more candidates for each of their open positions. In processing all these extra applications, AI doesn’t suffer from fatigue or the broadest set of human biases. As many AI software chiefs have commented, AI’s purpose here is to complement human-led decisions, without substituting for them completely. Maybe we trust AI’s job placement ability in the future just as much as we trust Google’s search capability today.     But let’s take a step back: the ultimate goal here is to accurately match job seeker to open position. We can design the system with two strategies. In a first scenario, we facilitate the assessment of job applications. That’s what AI technology currently offers to us. In a second scenario, we help job seekers to foster taste in all the large and small companies hiring around the world. But how? I suggest that technology should scrutinize companies, as much as companies want to scrutinize job applicants. For example, a system could collect 24-hour real-time electronic data of employee behaviors at companies, and offer scores of each company’s ability to manage and support communication and collaboration. It might track the daily actual communication between employees, use that data to score the quality and challenge of all workgroups’ actual goals and projects, and offer weekly scores regarding the company’s level of creativity and bureaucracy. In this way, the burden then falls on companies to be more transparent about the quality of their daily internal work environment and the worklife of employees, besides simply relying on technology that robotically sifts through hundreds of thousands of resumes and video interviews.     These two strategies are not mutually exclusive. But the point is that we give some power back to job applicants and level the playing field. Although companies today have more applicants to choose from, applicants today also potentially have more companies to choose from. If a medium-sized company in the USA has opened up their boundaries to the world, then the world should also be able to identify and assess it. We need more employment policies and entrepreneurship acknowledging that job seekers deserve to identify the best companies that are fit for them, not just the other way around. Perhaps one day, job applicants can use AI to help them identify the thousands of companies around the world that are currently hiring, and then see a score that estimates the probability that they won’t like or are too talented for any given company.     Companies could simultaneously get the chance to send a strong signal regarding the quality of their philosophy towards humanity. Perhaps some companies would be willing to pay for the rights to be certified in this kind of applicant-friendly system. They could be proud that they not only welcome shortlisted finalists to interview face-to-face at their offices, but that they are also confident and humble enough to respect job applicants in helping them decide whether their company is good enough for them in the first place. On the other hand, if job applicants paid a nominal subscription fee to use such AI, it would have the added benefit of helping companies to identify those job seekers that signal seriousness about their job hunt (as we might observe with LinkedIn’s subscription service today). These kinds of business models bring some balance back to the equation. If companies use AI job interview software to assess candidates but aren’t willing to share daily or weekly AI data regarding their own internal environment or their own company culture, then they are largely hypocritical.     These kinds of issues regarding the direction of innovation weren’t matters of concern in the past. However, times are changing. As AI advances further and further, part of the system should still ensure that job candidates are valued with some basic standard of dignity, from a human perspective. But at the very least, candidates deserve to be on a similar playing field as companies. If that requires giving job applicants the power to leverage their own AI in assessing the desirability or fit of companies to work for, so be it.      Note:     News story regarding Korea Airports Corp dropping AI interviews: http://www.koreaherald.com/view.php?ud=20211004000214       Click here to read the article

The Fourth Industrial Revolution and the Future of Engineering Education Written by Hamid Hefazi, PhD Professor & Chair, Mechanical Engineering Department     Convergence and recent advances in numerous emerging technologies are referred to as the era of the “Fourth Industrial Revolution (4IR).  The term was first proposed in 2016 by Klaus Schwab, Founder and Executive Chairman of the World Economic Forum (WEF).  4IR has major social, cultural, political, and global implications. American writer Alvin Toffler, in his book “Future Shock” published in 1970, was among the first to predict and discuss many of these issues.  Engineering is one of the most crucial professions for achieving the potentials of 4IR. In turn, it is also markedly impacted by it.     Faced with tremendous opportunities and challenges that the 4IR presents, engineering educators must take a critical look at the current state of engineering education and answer a number of hard questions such as: What skill sets are required for future engineers? Do current engineering curricula adequately provide these skills? What is the appropriate balance between theory and practice in engineering education? Is a four-year curriculum adequate to educate engineers of the future? Who should become an engineer?  These are difficult questions, for some of which there are no consensus answers.        Several studies by prominent engineering organizations such as the US National Academy of Engineering and the American Society of Mechanical Engineers have addressed this topic.  While some of their conclusions are different, they all strongly agree on the need for the development of certain attributes beyond the technical training of engineers.  These skills which are referred to as “soft skills”, are considered as essential as technical skills.       4IR presents substantial growth in the scope and scale of problems that engineers need to address. For example, engineering knowledge is now applied to improving the quality of healthcare, the safety of food products, and the operation of financial systems. Many of these problems are multidisciplinary and require teams of experts to address them. The complexity of the problems also requires a “tool-based” approach, integrating advanced technologies such as Computational Methods, Machine learning, and Artificial Intelligence with traditional engineering disciplines.        As former US secretary of education, Richard Riley noted: “We are currently preparing students for jobs that don’t yet exist, using technologies that haven’t been invented, in order to solve problems, we don’t even know are problems yet.” These challenges demand that engineering curricula go beyond traditional technical training. While it is safe to assume that future development in engineering will still be rooted in Mathematics and Physics, many other disciplines will be integrated with engineering. The intersection of biological sciences and engineering is already well established. However, the multidisciplinary nature of future problems is not limited to these areas. For example, understanding Cognitive Sciences play an important role in the engineering design process as well as the development of autonomous robots of the future. Understanding human psychology and human factors is an essential consideration in the development of space travel and space colonization.         It is only by aligning teaching and learning methods with the skills such as lifelong learning, complex problem solving, critical thinking, and cognitive flexibility, we can ensure that today’s students will be able to advance in the future dynamic environment.  Educating future engineers also needs integrating advanced tools in curricula and assigning complex problems that would require the synthesis of concepts from multiple disciplines, applying logical boundary conditions, and examining outcomes.       Engineering work is also the link between social needs and commercial applications. Along with solving technical issues, engineers must also analyze the impact of the products they develop or the systems they design on the environment and on the people using them. In the 4IR era economy, the allure of employment in “big businesses” will be replaced by the success of new industries that start as home businesses.  To thrive in such an economy, innovation, entrepreneurship, a global perspective, communication, and leadership skills are essential.       Finally, attracting the right talent to engineering programs is essential for the future of the profession. The current approach requires that young students join an educational pathway that ultimately results in an engineering degree. If a student enrolled in the wrong math class in 7th grade, she will find it difficult to become an engineer. This approach deprives the profession of many potential talents. A more holistic approach is needed to identify those candidates who have the ability to acquire knowledge rather than those who have certain pre-requisites.        In short, engineering education should focus on strong fundamentals in a wide range of sciences, the ability to acquire and use advanced technology, various softs skills, and most importantly the ability to acquire and apply new knowledge. It could be argued that it is extremely difficult to adequately include all of these elements in four-year engineering curricula. Therefore, the need for education beyond the Bachelor’s degree and technical specialization at the graduate level becomes inevitable.  The American education system is perhaps the first to recognize these challenging requirements and attempt to address them to some level of success.         Click here to read the article

How can forthcoming changes in Korean educational policy serve a meaningful worklife? Written by two authors: Chihmao Hsieh, Associate Professor of Entrepreneurship, SUNY Korea Karl Wennberg, Professor of Education and Entrepreneurship, Stockholm School of Economics   Education has been a focus in policy-making recently, as experts have called for a shift in the educational system amid forthcoming demographic changes and the “fourth industrial revolution”.  This past summer, the Education Committee of Korea’s National Assembly approved a bill to install a new body tentatively called the ‘National Education Commission’ (국가교육위원회).  The commission, scheduled to be launched next year, would be responsible for taking the lead in establishing a non-partisan long-term educational policy, while the Ministry of Education would carry out the policy’s goals and make any short-term administrative adjustments.   Although education in Korea is culturally tied to anticipated job security and life satisfaction, this renewed focus on Korean education comes at a time when job satisfaction in Korea remains dubious.  Between July-October 2020, the JoongAng Ilbo and Teamblind interviewed roughly 72,109 office workers from 9,371 local companies about their work, asking them about their welfare benefits, relationships with colleagues, trust among team members, and work autonomy.  Seven out of ten workers in Korea suffered burnout over the preceding one-year period.  While it is unsurprising that Korea still has one of the lowest worker productivities among the G20 countries, the data revealed that the two most important factors directly linked to the level of job satisfaction were the meaningfulness of work and the quality of relationships with bosses.   We believe that any major educational reform should be designed this time for the long-run purpose of fostering job satisfaction.  Ideally the government panel mentioned above will include businesspeople who respect education, alongside educators that respect organizational ‘best practices’ and the economy.  Yet we still envision some tactics for educational reform that can support future job satisfaction in Korea. In order to develop a workforce that is more innovative and passionate for re-learning throughout working life, more effort should be put into combining critical thinking with transdisciplinary education.  Such a prescription opens the door for unstructured problem-solving, and unfortunately, that’s when student performance assessment starts to become prohibitively subjective by Korean standards.  One possible solution is to enlist high-tech companies with their expertise in Big Data and AI to help with assessment.  For years, the ‘EdTech’ industry has worked on digital tools that assess knowledge, and these systems are not easy for students to ‘game’ and cheat on.  Most importantly, these high-tech companies and educational providers must convince students’ parents that their assessment systems are legitimate.   Even today, the meaningfulness of learning via concept acquisition is still emphasized less than rote memorization and standardized test taking.  There could be more interaction between EdTech companies and parts of the educational system, designed to address students’ and parents’ potential concern. For example, some of our Swedish university students created a startup called ‘Sqore’ which was briefly the largest in the world for holding student talent competitions, later pivoting into an assessment/student selection service for graduate school programs and companies. Those organizations contracted with Sqore because they saw problem-solving competitions as a good way not only to assess “soft” skills like creativity and interdisciplinarity, but also as a way to market their company in recruiting the most talented students.   Korea’s conglomerates could be enlisted to create more problem-solving competitions where winners are awarded with month-long or summer internships. Many large US-based companies as well as NASA have successfully used such ‘innovation competitions’ to attract talented and interested new employees. Such initiatives would send strong messages to both students and parents alike that grades should not be the sole obsession, and that the business world cares about critical and innovative thinking at all decision-making levels. Ideally, such competitions should focus less on narrowly specifying ‘ideal solutions’ or deliverables involving intellectual property, and more about assessing complementary measures of ability (e.g. creativity, interdisciplinary thinking, and communication skills).    Lastly, students should be exposed to greater amounts of teamwork at all levels of Korean education, instead of excessive competition and rivalry. Transdisciplinary education ideally should involve combining instructors and students from multiple disciplines into a single classroom environment, and forming teams. Students are then exposed to teamwork environments which include unfamiliar situations, requiring them to develop curiosity.  They would also learn about trust and trustworthiness, which are important for effective collaboration and team innovativeness. Of course, team-teaching is risky in Korean education if the instructors end up antagonizing each other’s authority in front of students during class. Teachers should instead take the opportunity to enhance their own learning and building interpersonal trust when interacting with each other. It is here where an instructor’s humility can be promoted to impress students.   Certainly, there is no single ‘silver bullet’ for simultaneously improving student outcomes and job satisfaction in Korea.  But we see these two as correlated objectives.  Improving the educational system to allow for reputable AI-driven assessment solutions; showing parents and students that businesses care about critical thinking skill over test scores; and introducing transdisciplinary teamwork to students, can all naturally lead to a more meaningful, entrepreneurial, dynamic, and exciting career development experiences. Perhaps these three tactics could even be combined synergistically; for example, Korean EdTech companies could host transdisciplinary problem-solving team competitions. Overall, shouldn’t the focus be less about educational and training policy, and more about a broader learning policy?   Read More    

Anonymity  Written by Gerald Stokes There are even more complicated times ahead.           In this ever-expanding age of the internet in which it has become a necessity of life, there is a growing concern about the extent to which individuals’ privacy may be violated. There are certainly many ways privacy can be compromised. As I looked at the range of issues concerning privacy and privacy protection, it led me down a path to the consideration of anonymity in cyberspace. This is becoming another important issue in our highly connected world.       When we think of privacy, probably the most intense invasion of privacy is identity theft. This is a burglary of the most personal kind. People that have experienced feel violated and it takes considerable time and effort to recover. It happens in many ways and in varying degrees. It can range from taking over your identity and stealing your money, to assuming your work identity to steal from your employer. While the users of the internet may bear some responsibility for the theft of their personal data, leaks of personal information held by a third party are increasingly common. This may lead to individual identity theft or any number of other questionable activities. In most of the world, identity theft and the stealing of personal data are crimes – as they should be.       On the other hand, data mining by internet service providers is considered a legitimate business purpose. Providers, like Google, track our use of their browsers, email, news services, and other apps they may provide. They track not only our usage, but the content of that usage. They examine it and sell the results of their examination to advertisers or use it themselves. While these providers may end up knowing more about us than anyone who has stolen our identity, it is considered a fair trade for the free usage of their services. This data collection is largely information about us. Who we are specifically is less important than our attributes, our gender, our age, what our interests are, how much money we make, where we live and other demographic data. These attributes are connected to an “address” – a place to find us on the internet with ads, offers, or political promotions.       Individuals have evolved strategies to deal with this targeting. One is to use the time-honored tradition of choosing your “username”. Some of us prefer to make these usernames similar to our real name, while others choose more exotic aliases or “handles”. Some people will use different identities for different purposes – social media, email, online shopping – thereby compartmentalizing their identity.  Many people go beyond this approach and create elaborate sets of identities for their various social media accounts. These are rapidly evolving to graphical representations or avatars. These are what I would call a weak protection of “who I am”. A more complete protection of protecting “who I am” is to become anonymous. This comes in several layers. In literary circles authors sometimes have a “nom de plume”. The American author Samuel Clemens wrote as “Mark Twain”. Authors true identities may or may not be known. For example, here in Korea, who is, or who are, Djuna?       Increasingly, we see individuals, particularly in social media commentary simply becoming their alias, remaining anonymous. Anonymity is an extreme form of privacy. A person’s true identity remains private while their alias becomes a social commentor, a political gadfly, or a cultural critic. Most democracies protect people’s ability to speak – commonly called freedom of speech.  Generally, freedom of speech is a protection against the actions of the government targeting what we say. However, as we well know, freedom of speech does not protect individuals from “prosecution by the public” on social media. Protection of ones’ private self from this onslaught by using an alias, and remaining anonymous, seems certainly prudent in some cases. On the other hand, the same kind of anonymity can equally protect a bully or a purveyor of false news. Hiding behind their internet identity, individuals feel emboldened to act, believing that they will not be held accountable. This is complicated when one realizes that not all “identities” on the internet are human. The development of bots, artificial users of the internet is becoming commonplace. These can be very simple programs or more sophisticated AI based systems. They are used to amplify and spread messages. These bots never rest and have been used to influence political campaigns and spread false information about individuals, technologies like vaccines or other matters of public interest.       Facebook and other service providers are trying to understand their responsibility for these uses of their platforms. Increasingly around the world governments wonder what, if any regulation might be required. Other governments, or parts of governments, wonder how the same tools might be used to advance their national agenda – either by controlling content within their borders or launching cyber based campaigns in, even against other countries.       As a student of the relationship between technology and society, I have frequently shared ideas in this column that might address the issues I raise. I have suggested another “law” of robotics that requires more responsible human actions and the use of blockchain to ensure data fidelity in the face of fake news. I have no answer for the privacy and anonymity conundrum. A perfectly reasonable desire to protect “who I am” uses anonymity, but that same anonymity can be used as a cover for individuals who approach the world with malicious intent.   Some aspects of privacy concerns are being addressed. Two factor authentication is helping protect against some forms of identity theft. Similarly, there cases where individuals involved in election tampering have been charged with a crime. However, actions are few and the problem is growing.         More complicated times are indeed ahead …        Click here to read the original article     

“The future of a global economy depends on technological innovation and the people who lead it.”   SUNY Korea Professor Lee Jin Sang voiced his opinion that the development of technological innovation should be accelerated in this era of great transformation around the world. He was speaking at the '13th Good Growth Global Forum (2021 GGGF)', held at the international conference hall of the Chamber of Commerce and Industry in Junggu on September 9th.   He emphasized that “The future direction of the global economy will depend on this field. In order to lead technological innovation in the relevant field, it is necessary to invest in R&D and secure human resources.”

Can a Focus on Empathy and Trust Guide Our Taste in Choosing the Right Problems to Solve?   Written by Chihmao Hsieh    In his inauguration speech earlier this year, Lee Kwang-hyung, the new president of KAIST, remarked “KAIST는 앞으로 인류가 당면한 문제를 찾아 정의하고 해결하는 것에 중점을 둬야 한다”.  This is a fundamental issue in entrepreneurship: the opportunities that we find depend on how we search for solutions to a problem, but also how we formulate problems in the first place. For example, we all know that it’s not easy to park a car in Seoul.  If we formulate the problem as a lack of parking spaces, then maybe we should build more parking garages. However, if the problem is that there are too many idle cars, then we should better optimize public transportation, ride sharing, or the taxi system. Or maybe we decide that cars are currently too big, and smaller cars will be easier to navigate in tight spaces.  These three different problem formulations all lead to very different technological directions.  Indeed, our taste in the problems that we identify today affects the decisions and socio-technological environment that we have tomorrow.   These days, society is addressing various problems with the aid of rapidly advancing artificial intelligence and robotics.  Recent innovations certainly save money.  Coffee barista robots don’t get tired.  Digital news anchors don’t need health insurance. And self-driving trucks don’t ask for pensions. While jobs are at risk of being lost, new jobs will be created.  In the near term, for example, we still need people to maintain the robots that make the coffee or fix the trucks that deliver our packages. Technological advances are fundamentally entangled with the changing human tasks and jobs on this planet.   Set aside the idea of universal basic income, for now.  We face three issues: which problems to solve, what technologies to develop, and how to identify and design the tasks and jobs eventually performed by humans.  There is no magic equation that explains how this all actually unfolds.  Often, even, new scientific technologies emerge so quickly that they arrive before we know what problems they should solve.  With increasingly advanced AI, where applications are so broad and dramatic, we should stop to think:  How do we formulate and choose which problems to solve?   One diagnosis would require us to work backwards: ask ourselves how we want future society and work culture to reflect core values of humanity, and then use that vision to help constrain and guide the kinds of technologies we develop and the kinds of problems that we address.   Recent research on service industries suggests that AI will tend to first replace mechanically-oriented jobs, then analysis-oriented jobs, then intuition-oriented jobs, and finally empathy-oriented jobs, in that order.  Opinions differ regarding the overall timeline.  However, building and refining a stronger culture for empathy now will help preserve a basis of humanity at work and in society, protecting ourselves from the most damaging economics of AI.  Human empathy is not particularly scalable, but maybe we also should not be trying to make it scalable. should not be scalable.  Marketing staff, news reporters, nurses, teachers and countless other occupations today can make valuable use of human empathy, and we should support that kind of sociocultural direction. On a broad scale, more products and services can be created to enable people to exhibit, share, and promote empathy, at work and at home. In the future, hopefully still more different kinds of empathy-oriented jobs can emerge.   Besides empathy, we should also consider the importance of preserving the importance of trust in interactions between humans.  This issue hasn’t been addressed much; instead, most scholars and policymakers today are worried about how we humans could best learn to trust AI.  But there’s an important conceptual distinction between how humans trust AI and how they trust other humans.  On one hand, trust between humans requires an element of vulnerability to others’ self-interest: if a father promises his child that he will drive her to an evening hagwon exam, she trusts him that he won’t get drunk while partying with co-workers, then arriving late to pick her up.  On the other hand, machines and robots have no self-interest; we merely trust them to function reliably and make fewer errors than us.  As our interactions become increasingly mediated by computerized technology and AI, we position ourselves to learn to “trust” and “forgive” computers and robots more than we maintain our ability and capacity to trust and forgive each other.  As a civilized society, shouldn’t we be developing technology and policy that ultimately helps humans trust and empathize with each other more, not less?   Recent developments offer potential case studies.  Aria, for example, represents AI by SK Telecom that has been shown to empathetically stimulate senior citizens’ cognition and delay onset of dementia, while also doubling their daily travel distances.  But does the AI-based replication of the late Kim Kwang-Seok’s voice and singing help to foster empathy or fulfill egos?  Are recently developed AI-based ‘digital girlfriends’ more likely to support or cheapen cultural norms of human trust and empathy?  While it’s true that business ventures should often be excused for generating ‘negative externalities’ (부정적인 외부효과), we should be actively avoiding those negative externalities that fundamentally discount any core value of humanity.   Formulating the right problems, developing supportive technological solutions, and fostering meaningful jobs should be simultaneous considerations that will require business and government to have good taste.  But good taste in the value of human empathy and trust is not straightforward.  For example, empathy should not completely stifle competitive spirit, and sometimes trust between business partners should not cut off valuable exploration of the business environment.  As countries—including South Korea—race to become world leaders in commercializing AI-based technology, they should all respect the responsibility of choosing what entrepreneurial directions we take.  Overall, having good taste in humanity is simply becoming more valuable than ever.  Hopefully AI won’t become an expert in that too.      Click here to read the article

“It Was Almost Like a Press Conference” … SUNY Korea Admission Briefing Session Attracted Many Prospective Students and Their Parents Despite the COVID19 Situation The SUNY Korea Admission Briefing Session for the Fall 2021 and Spring 2022 semester entry was held at Shilla Stay Samsung in Seoul on the 24th. Students and parents who attended the briefing session showed high interest in—and continued to ask questions even after the event—on the merits of each major and career path after graduation, rather than inquiring about the university itself. The briefing session was held in English and Korean respectively in the morning and afternoon, with around 10 participants in the morning and 70 participants in the afternoon. Although the number of participants per session was limited to 50 people due to the COVID19 pandemic, the afternoon session was so eagerly anticipated that more than 20 people attended additionally without prior registration. The briefing session was conducted in accordance with the government’s COVID19 prevention rules. As for the reasons for developing their interest in SUNY Korea, students and parents mentioned the advantage of receiving a foreign university degree without studying abroad and the opportunity of rapid improvement in English language proficiency. "While planning for the admission of universities in the US, I got to learn about SUNY Korea and prepared for its admission at the same time. I was attracted to the fact that I can improve my English skills with 100% English lectures as the university provides the same curriculum as in the US while staying in Korea. I think it is also a benefit that I get to meet foreign friends and learn different languages from various countries," said Kim Min-Ji, a senior student at a local high school. Jeong Hyo-Jung, a parent who came with Kim Min-Ji, said, "My daughter wanted to study in a foreign country, so we sent her abroad last year. However, she had to come back earlier because of the COVID19 pandemic, and the situation has not gotten any better for her to leave the country again. Thus, we considered an option of applying for SUNY Korea." Among the participants, there were several transfer students as well. Yang Hyun-Sik, a graduate of a 2-year college, said, "I realized that having a degree from a four-year university is necessary to have a competency in a job market, and transferring to a domestic university was already a red ocean for me," adding, "My brother is currently studying in the State University of New York, and I was always jealous about his English ability. I am interested in SUNY Korea because I wish to improve my English skills along with having an opportunity to study at the Stony Brook New York campus for a year. Kim Kyu-Seok, the team leader of the admissions team at SUNY Korea, said, "The change in students’ perception about university admission due to the evolving atmospheres in education, such as a decrease in the number of school-age populations, and the emergence of various higher education alternatives, was evident throughout the session. As students’ awareness about SUNY Korea has been enhanced, I received many constructive questions about its programs rather than simple questions about the university itself. It was as if I was at a press conference. The briefing session was substantial because students brought questions which reflect their individual circumstances." At the briefing session, not only were the university and its seven different majors introduced, but also an analysis of admission trends and admitted student portfolios was conducted. In particular, the session provided detailed explanations of the admission process that is not included in the number of times that one can apply to domestic universities during early and regular admission. Also, an analysis of admitted students’ high school GPA and tips for acceptance was given. Shin Hye-Mi, the assistant manager of the admissions team, noted that, "Even if students are not confident with their high school GPA, they can submit other supplementary documents such as SAT scores, essays, awards, and certifications. The genuine interest in the major and thorough preparation for admission are the basis of successful applications. The admission process is based on 100% document screening, but some students can be invited to an interview and this can be an opportunity for them to make a good impression.” Meanwhile, Stony Brook University (SBU) of SUNY Korea is recruiting 260 students this year. The Fall 2021 admission deadline for early applications is April 30th, and for regular applications is July 16th. The required application documents include an English high school transcript, English cover letter, English or Korean recommendation letter, and official English proficiency test scores (TOEFL iBT 80 or higher/ IELTS Academic 6.5 or higher/ New SAT ERW 480 or higher/ ACT English 19 or higher/ Duolingo English Test 105 or higher). SUNY Korea FIT (Fashion Institute of Technology) is recruiting 105 students this year. The deadline for regular applications is April 30th. The required application documents include an English high school transcript, English cover letter, and official English proficiency test scores (TOEFL iBT 80 or higher/ IELTS Academic 6.5 or higher/ PTE 53 or higher/ Duolingo English Test 105 or higher). Note that the English proficiency test score requirement for FIT is different from that of SBU. For more information, students can visit SUNY Korea's official website. Additionally, the second admission briefing session will be held on June 5th.       Click here to read the original article

World Bank Group and SUNY Korea will host a five-week training program for entrepreneurs from 12 countries to leverage ICT solutions to drive innovation and entrepreneurship. This program (ETHOS: Entrepreneurial Talents’ House of Opportunities and Supports) begins on April 19th to foster and empower talented entrepreneurs through digital skill support and entrepreneurship training. This is the fourth edition of the program since its first inception in 2015, funded by the Korea World Bank Partnership Facility (KWPF).     To help the ICT start-ups strengthen their businesses in the COVID-19 era, the ETHOS program this year will be operated virtually to selected participants from 12 countries: Algeria, Cambodia, Cameroon, Côte d'Ivoire, Ethiopia, Georgia, Lao PDR, Lebanon, Rwanda, Tunisia, Viet Nam, and West Bank and Gaza. The program entails a knowledge series, mentoring, tech partnership, networking, and pitching sessions to boost entrepreneurial aspects of participants. Selected participants will take customized business mentoring sessions, have opportunities to partner with Korean deep-tech startups to establish joint-ventures, and get investment opportunities.     Selected participants will develop their business models more competitively and revise their pitch decks more attractively during 8-hour intensive mentoring sessions addressed by skillful mentors from CNT Tech, Born2Global Centre, D3, and NH Investment & Securities. Born2Global Centre is actively supporting the program by matching them with tech partners in Korea and providing joint-venture establishment opportunities. With tech partnership sessions, the program will be a channel for Korean deep-tech start-ups to expand their business to the globe and for the selected participants to integrate Korean advanced technologies into their business models.     Wonki Min, the President of SUNY Korea, emphasized the true meaning of entrepreneurship in the type of society which the ETHOS program actively pursues.     “As SUNY Korea’s mission is nurturing creative leaders standing up to global challenges, we are more than delighted to host the ETHOS program. Starting up a business is not only the key to economic development but also essential to the social and cultural advancement of human society. Therefore, ETHOS is committed to providing entrepreneurs with opportunities to build essential capacities to become successful.”     Samia Melhem and Je Myung Ryu, Task Team Leaders from World Bank Group, made clear the role of ICTs in the COVID-19 pandemic situation.     “Today, we are living in an extraordinary and unprecedented time, heading into a fast-changing future. The COVID-19 pandemic has suddenly accelerated digital transformation to the forefront across almost all sectors and brought new demands for disruptive technology solutions to better respond to the urgent medical, social, and economic needs. We have seen abrupt changes in consumer behavior in this digital economy as well. For both startups and businesses, the ability to leverage digital skills and online platforms has become a critical element to meet the consumer needs in a pandemic.”     Hoon Sahib Soh, Special Representative of World Bank Group Korea Office, expressed high expectations toward the ETHOS program.     “The WBG Korea Office is actively supporting SUNY Korea on the ETHOS II program. The Korea Office is a global innovation and technology center for sustainable development.  I believe supporting programs such as ETHOS will be an integral part of our innovation and technology program”.     The successful execution of the ETHOS program will enhance the reputation of Korea as a leader of ICT entrepreneurship, as well as demonstrate Korean economic development based on ICT businesses.       Click here to read the related article 

Net- Zero  Written by Professor Gerald M. Stokes       Recently, Korea pledged to make its economy “net-zero.” This means it will effectively eliminate all carbon emissions by 2050. This goal is admirable and in keeping with the five-year-old Paris Climate Accord process. In Korea, this is part of an emerging strategy to use the recovery from the COVID-19 pandemic as a vehicle for enhancing the green agenda in general and the reduction of greenhouse gas emissions in particular.     The commitment is important and necessary. Every nation will have to make a similar commitment in order to stabilize the Earth’s climate. Korea’s leadership in this process is consistent with its emerging leadership role in many areas like culture, electronics, and disaster response and in this case the UN Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC). This leadership within the UNFCCC became significant during the tenure of Ban Ki Moon as Secretary General of the UN and continues with Hoesung Lee, the current head of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change.     This will not be easy, and I think it is important to think about what a profound change this will bring to Korea.     Net-zero has two parts. The first part is to reduce the amount of carbon dioxide being released into the atmosphere. The emissions from Korea are greater than 12 metric tons of carbon dioxide per person per year. These emissions come from many industrial sources: generation of electricity, manufacturing, steel production, and shipping. Individual Koreans generate emissions by driving, cooking, and heating residences. Carbon dioxide emissions come from practically every aspect of society.     Because “decarbonizing” some of the uses will be difficult, for example, steel production, the second part of a net-zero strategy is supporting processes that absorb carbon dioxide from the atmosphere. These processes are needed to offset difficult to eliminate emissions. For example, the forests of Korea absorb a little less than one ton per capita of carbon dioxide per year. There are also technologies that capture carbon dioxide for either utilization or disposal. These latter technologies are not currently in widespread use in Korea or anywhere else in the world. They are certainly worthy of governmental R&D.     A great deal of energy generation technology is available to facilitate this transition., Renewable energy systems like wind, solar, and wave energy, as well as nuclear power can all make significant contributions. Recent advances in fusion power are also important, but this technology is not likely to create an impact before 2050.     I am sure that Korea will rise to the technological challenge, but there is more.     First and foremost, net-zero essentially means no fossil fuel use in Korea – not for electricity, not for driving, not for manufacturing, not for cooking. The 12-ton per capita carbon emissions highlight how much the Korean economy depends on fossil fuels. In many ways decarbonization should also be viewed as a reindustrialization of the country. This transformation will not be easy. It entails not only capital investment but many businesses, large and small, will either no longer exist or will have to dramatically change their business strategy. Lessons from around the world suggest that the magnitude of these changes will create political resistance. The challenge will become how to sustain the commitment with the government changing every 5 years.     Next, it is important to plan to decarbonize the entire economy. Generally, we think carbon emissions are tied to production and fuel use within the country. However, there is a concept called consumption emissions, which is a measure of the emissions associated with consumption within a country. For example, if a country imports steel for construction, the country is consuming a commodity that generated emissions while being produced in another economy. Korea’s imported consumptive emission has dropped from 30% of domestic emission in 1990 to less than 5% in 2017, an impressive change. The US on the other hand, had no net addition of emissions from consumption in 1990, but its transformation to a service economy has resulted in it importing goods that now embody almost 8% of its production emissions. In essence, the US, in offshoring its heavy industry, has also exported its emissions. In Europe the same is true where countries like France, Great Britain, and Italy import goods that generate between 20 and 30 percent of their domestic emissions. The temptation for Korea to move emissions offshore will be very high. The net-zero commitment must include the whole economy, including emissions embodied in imports.     Similarly, countries not only offshore emissions but they offshore poorly performing technology to the developing world. One prominent example of this is automobiles. Many developed countries, including Korea, are putting in place policies to improve mileage or accelerate the transformation to electric vehicles. The resulting used car supply is frequently exported to developing countries, where the vehicles’ poor performance creates environmental issues. These issues have led to some countries actually banning the import of used vehicles. Losing, or not participating in these markets would affect the value of used cars, a non-trivial consideration in consumer decisions to upgrade their vehicles. But the emissions exported in these vehicles are not a real reduction in global emissions. Similarly, developed countries not only export emissions in used technology, but also sell technologies abroad that would not be allowed within their own borders. Sometimes foreign assistance dollars are spent supporting the construction of coal-fired power plants in developing countries, that could not be built in the donor country.     In conclusion, net-zero is an important and necessary aspiration. However, as Korea takes on this task, it must do several things. First, it needs a policy and aspiration that covers the whole economy, including addressing the carbon emissions of its imports and exports. Next, it must ensure that the policy has continuity and long-term support. Finally, it needs to be ready for the profound transformation net-zero represents. Korea shares the atmosphere and climate with almost 200 other countries. Its leadership will help others understand the importance of assuming global responsibilities and stewardship.           Click here to read the original article         

SUNY Korea welcomed new students at the Spring 2021 Online Convocation. New students, faculty and staff came together virtually to celebrate the event on Friday, February 19. We sincerely send our congratulations to all those who made it to our university!         Related Article: http://www.newsway.co.kr/news/view?tp=1&ud=2021021917193891715      

How can Korea’s Social Culture Evolve to Support its Entrepreneurship Education?   Written by Dr. Chihmao Hsieh (Professor, Department of Business Management)       Entrepreneurship training and education programs have grown exponentially around the world in the last two decades.  Naturally, the government and educational sector in Korea have been busy creating programs for students. Since 2002, the Korean Ministry of SMEs and Startups has been implementing the “Youth Biz School” project to spread entrepreneurship to young people. Across all those years, about 3,700 schools have participated in that program. The Korea Institute of Startup & Entrepreneurship Development (KISED) was then launched in 2008 as a business incubator foundation, which now also adds a wide variety of entrepreneurship education and training programs. Middle schools and high schools all across Korea have created their own in-house entrepreneurship education programs, some yielding dozens of project-based outcomes every year. Today we can find good startup enthusiasm at dozens of Korean universities. Courses and educational events aiming to foster innovation and entrepreneurship are almost countless.     Yet, decades later, the entrepreneurship output at the highest educational level—the university—is still underwhelming.  According to the Korea Herald Business Daily (미주헤럴드경제), government support for university entrepreneurship programming in Korea recently is around 209 억 KRW while the startup revenue during the equivalent period has only been 102 억 KRW.  Startup revenue can certainly lag that programming expenditure, but many entrepreneurship ecosystem leaders still lament these days that the output cannot rationalize the educational expenditure. While revenue isn’t the only indicator of success in entrepreneurship education, rapidly growing innovative startups are still the most respected indicator.  In part due to my experience as an entrepreneurship educator for 15 years in the USA, Europe, and now Korea, I can suggest 3 different sociocultural elements of the entrepreneurship ecosystem here in Korea that still require development, to fully appreciate the potential of its entrepreneurship education.     First, existing medium-sized enterprises should be more involved in the entrepreneurship education ecosystem.  Large corporations like Samsung have steadily developed entrepreneurship and innovation programming that targets and benefits students, but chaebols alone cannot serve all the promising student ventures.  While Samsung now has an in-house startup incubation program for its employees, and Hyundai and SK have recently partnered to nurture mobility and connected-car startups, many students today still have resistant pre-conceptions that Korean chaebols are unfriendly towards student entrepreneurship efforts and any startup success.  The government should consider gathering successful medium-sized businesses into a national R&D network that can be leveraged to partner with new student startups.  Of course, this is not easy.  Those successful medium-sized businesses would ideally be vetted and certified in terms of their resources, commitment, reputation, and collegiality towards students.  The Korean government should enlist and partner with financial institutions to play a larger role in developing innovative financing programs that stimulate partnerships between successful medium-sized enterprises and award-winning student startups.     Second, parents should become more willing to accept and motivate their children to develop their creative ability and explore entrepreneurship during schooling.  In April 2017, the “Presidential Youth Committee” (대통령직속 청년위원회) conducted a survey of 423 young entrepreneurs, asking them about their parents’ attitudes towards their startup.  28.1% of those parents had objected to their children creating startups.  From those parents, the top two reasons for opposing start-ups were that they wanted their children to find stable jobs (37.8%), and that they believed that startup success was difficult (22.7%).  Many of today’s parents are still stuck on their children working for large stable chaebols like Samsung, LG, or Lotte, and some may furthermore subscribe to the cultural history where scholars and government officials tend to have a higher status than businesspeople (“양천제”).  Government and educational programs should welcome parents to the learning process, educating them about the value of entrepreneurial thinking for worklife in startups and in today’s large corporations.  Schools and entrepreneurship training programs should not always turn away parents after they drop off their children to these programs. Even if they are not allowed to physically join their children during educational sessions, in today’s Youtube and Zoom world, parents should still be offered some information access.     Lastly, Korea needs to find ways to give successful entrepreneurs some celebrity status and make them stronger positive role models.  Maybe people are cynical that extremely rich and successful entrepreneurs are not very forthcoming in explaining their success.  Many successful Korean entrepreneurs seem to hide from the public eye, so that their behavior cannot be monitored and scrutinized.  Thus, instead of becoming celebrities, most Korean startup founders don’t usually stay on as CEO’s after tasting huge success; instead they often transition into the background as board directors or chairmen.  Ultimately, there is very little opportunity to ‘cheerlead’ the successful entrepreneurs in Korean culture, as we see in American culture.  Without those role models, students have one less source of inspiration.  Dramatic angel-investment TV shows like the USA’s “Shark Tank” or the UK’s “Dragon’s Den” could be a good start.     Young-ha Koh, head of the Korea Business Angel Association, remarks that “The most talented American students who grow up receiving entrepreneurship education dream of launching start-ups, but Koreans have no dreams of start-ups.” For almost two decades, a lot of energy, attention, and resources have gone into changing the mindsets of kids here in Korea, in terms of fostering their abilities to think about how they can be creative, to think about how they think, and to re-frame the path to success.  Those are wonderful attempts at development.  But if broader Korean policy and culture cannot nurture entrepreneurial capabilities after that educational programming and training is over, then much of that effort will have been wasted.  The most inspired kids may feel abandoned, remember that abandonment, and take their hungry innovative mindset to another country instead.     Please click here to know more about the Department of Business  Management.  Please click here to read the Korean version on the Maeil Business Newspaper.

SUNY Korea made a business agreement with Uway Global, the largest application platform, which provides consulting service during the university application period.   From now on, students will be able to apply to SUNY Korea through the Uway application system.        Below are the related articles:  http://www.incheonilbo.com/news/articleView.html?idxno=1076030  http://www.kmaeil.com/news/articleView.html?idxno=261448    http://www.asiaa.co.kr/news/articleView.html?idxno=18414  https://www.anewsa.com/detail.php?number=2335224&thread=09    http://www.newsway.co.kr/news/view?tp=1&ud=2021011817044211343  http://www.enewstoday.co.kr/                If you have more questions regarding admission, please email our admission team: SBU : admission@sunykorea.ac.kr  FIT : fit@sunykorea.ac.kr