40 universities to raise tuition

[Anchor]

["Freeze tuition fees!"]

The slogan of 'tuition protest' that echoed in college towns every spring has disappeared for over a decade.

In 2009, as demands for 'half-price tuition' intensified, the government began recommending that universities freeze tuition fees.

With the government's incentive of national scholarship support, tuition fees, which had been rising by 6-7% annually until the end of the 2000s, have been effectively maintained at a frozen level until recently.

However, the atmosphere this year is quite different.

Universities are citing financial difficulties and are increasingly raising tuition fees.

In this era of high inflation, the burden on college students is expected to grow.

Reporter Kim Seong-su has the story.

[Report]

Sung Kyung-heon, a student at a private university in Seoul, is facing a new worry on top of the already significant burden of living expenses.

This is due to news that university tuition is likely to rise significantly.

[Sung Kyung-heon/College Student: "(I pay) about 6.3 million won a year, and if it goes up by 5%, that means I would have to pay about 315,000 won more for a year. Some students are worried about it."]

Sogang University has already decided to raise tuition by nearly 5% for the first time in 13 years, and Kookmin University has made a similar decision after 17 years.

In addition, many private universities in Seoul, including Yonsei University and Kyung Hee University, are reviewing tuition increases.

Since 2012, the government has pressured universities by reducing national scholarship support if they raise tuition fees.

The Higher Education Act also limits the increase in tuition fees to 1.5 times the inflation rate over the previous three years.

However, as inflation has surged, the cap, which was around 2%, has skyrocketed to over 5% since last year.

From the universities' perspective, raising tuition fees close to the cap is financially more advantageous than relying on government scholarship support.

Despite the Education Ministry's appeals to freeze tuition fees, over 40 universities have already announced plans to increase tuition.

[Lim Eun-hee/Researcher at the Korea Higher Education Research Institute: "Regulations are weak, and it seems that everyone is following suit in raising fees. (If tuition is frozen) the government would have to provide that much more financial support..."]

Although student organizations have announced their response plans, the combination of a chaotic political situation and universities' financial limits is leading to a loosening of the freeze on tuition fees.

This is KBS News, Kim Seong-su.