Korea’s higher education push stalls as foreign faculty numbers decline

Student enrollment at Korean universities is becoming more internationally diverse than ever before. Yet in contrast, the number of foreign instructors continues to decline, exposing structural limits in the country's globalization drive. Various factors, from low pay and rigid employment rules to visa constraints and housing costs, are undermining universities' efforts to attract and retain global faculty members. At the same time, universities face a delicate balancing act — easing barriers to bring in more foreign faculty while ensuring they are not hired merely to boost rankings, but can make meaningful contributions to research and teaching. Pay gap widens under tuition freeze Data from the Korean Educational Development Institute showed that the number of full-time foreign instructors surged from 1,671 in 2005 to a peak of 5,358 in 2013, before dropping below 5,000 in 2017 and declining further to 4,013 as of 2025. The trajectory tracks the budgetary strain universities began feeling after a tuition freeze. The freeze has its roots in the early 2000s, when criticism over steep tui

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