Can Focusing Support on Three Regional Flagship Universities Solve the Crisis Facing Local Colleges?
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Writer
CFE
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- The Limits of a Scaled-Down Version of “Creating 10 Seoul National Universities” and Market-Friendly Alternatives for the Survival of Regional Universities -
1. Introduction
On April 15, 2026, the Ministry of Education announced the “Plan to Cultivate Regional Talent Linked to Growth Engines,” stating that it would select three flagship national universities and intensively foster them as hubs for education and research in growth-engine sectors and AI. The Ministry described this policy as an implementation model for the national agenda of “creating 10 Seoul National Universities” and also presented a plan to invest an additional KRW 4 trillion or more over five years in flagship national universities, beginning with three schools in 2026. According to the press release, the core elements of the policy are the establishment of “Growth Engine Brand Colleges” and research hubs, support for regional AI education and research hubs, expansion of contract departments tied to employment conditions, and expansion of shared universities (Ministry of Education press release, 2026).
On the surface, this plan appears to be an active policy aimed at easing the dominance of the Seoul metropolitan area and encouraging regional talent to settle locally. In particular, the underlying objective of creating a virtuous cycle of education, research, and employment by linking regional strategic industries with universities, businesses, and research institutes is certainly understandable. However, a closer look at the policy design shows that this plan is less a survival strategy for regional universities as a whole than a selective support policy centered on a small number of flagship national universities. This is because it reduces the causes of the regional university crisis to the issue of strengthening the competitiveness of a few specific universities, rather than viewing it as a problem of structure and regulation (Ministry of Education press release, 2026).
This report seeks to analyze the problems with the government’s policy of fostering three regional flagship national universities as one solution to the regional university crisis and to explore reasonable policy alternatives in light of lessons from overseas cases.
2. What the Government’s Policy to Foster Three Regional Flagship National Universities Contains
The most striking feature of this plan is the large-scale concentrated investment in three flagship national universities. The Ministry of Education announced that it would provide these universities with package support, including the establishment of Growth Engine Brand Colleges and specialized research hubs, scholarships for outstanding students, research scholarships for graduate students, specialized faculty tracks, and linkages with businesses and research institutions. It also proposed fostering these universities as regional AI education and research hubs and establishing AI academic organizations and presidential task units within the universities.
At the same time, the Ministry said it would promote expansion of contract departments tied to employment conditions, mandatory basic AI education, stronger project-based education, and the expansion of shared universities at other flagship national universities through a “Growth Bridge Building” project. On the surface, this appears to be a dual structure in which a model centered on three universities is pursued alongside support for all flagship national universities. In practice, however, it is a structure in which core resources and symbolic significance are concentrated in the three selected schools. The Ministry itself explained that “with a limited budget, selection and concentration were unavoidable in order to produce quick results,” clearly revealing the essence of the policy.
This is where the problem begins. The regional university crisis is not a problem affecting only three national universities. The higher education ecosystem in the provinces is sustained through the complex interaction of flagship national universities, general private universities, junior colleges, vocational education institutions, and local lifelong education institutions. Accordingly, solving the crisis requires addressing the survival foundations of the regional higher education system as a whole. Yet this plan does not view regional universities as a single ecosystem; instead, it is based on a “trickle-down” assumption that strengthening a few institutions at the top will generate broader effects below. Contrary to the Ministry’s expectations, this approach carries a substantial risk of widening internal regional disparities.
3. Analysis of the Problems with the Government’s Solution to the Regional University Crisis
◩ It mistakes the regional university crisis for a “flagship national university project”
The essence of the regional university crisis is not simple. A declining school-age population, preference for the Seoul metropolitan area, concentration in the job market, tuition freezes, regulations on real estate and asset utilization, rigidity in enrollment adjustments, constraints on university-industry cooperation, and unequal institutional environments between national and private universities are all operating at once. Under such circumstances, fostering a few flagship national universities as strategic industry hubs is unlikely to solve the crisis facing regional universities as a whole.
On the contrary, the result may be that only a few flagship national universities survive, while many regional private universities and small- to mid-sized institutions decline even faster. The government explains this as the “phased diffusion of a successful model,” but in reality, it is far more common for talent, faculty, business cooperation, and policy attention to be sucked toward one side than for a successful model to spread. In the name of solving the regional university problem, it is effectively dividing winners and losers once again within the regions themselves.
◩ It may deepen intra-regional inequality rather than promote regional balance
It is not enough to focus only on the gap between the Seoul metropolitan area and non-metropolitan regions; we must also examine disparities within non-metropolitan regions. If scholarships, research funding, AI organizations, favorable treatment for outstanding faculty, and business-linked packages are concentrated in particular flagship national universities, top applicants, professors, research projects, and corporate projects will naturally gravitate toward them. That would leave nearby regional private universities and junior colleges at an even greater disadvantage in student recruitment, faculty hiring, and opportunities for university-industry cooperation.
In other words, the benefits of the policy are more likely to be concentrated in “top universities within the regions” than spread across “the region as a whole.” In that case, what the government presents as fostering regional universities could in effect converge into fostering regional elite universities. Rather than thickening the regional university ecosystem, it could reinforce yet another hierarchy within the regions.
◩ It is centered on financial support and weak on regulatory reform
This plan strongly emphasizes the scale of fiscal input. But for regional universities to survive, freedom matters more than money. Universities need to be able to merge and consolidate departments, operate jointly with outside institutions, establish bases in areas where demand exists, flexibly design curricula with businesses, and generate income by utilizing their assets. Yet Korea’s university system still has a strong tendency to operate within a framework set by the government.
The Ministry of Education’s plan as well is framed more in the language of control and management—KPIs, performance management, stricter faculty personnel standards, and performance evaluation systems—than in expanding university autonomy. This may cause universities to function not as independent agents of innovation but as implementing bodies for government projects. Fiscal support without expanded autonomy is unlikely to lead to sustainable competitiveness.
◩ A national-university-centered mindset erases the reality of private universities
The crisis in regional higher education is not a crisis of national universities alone. In many regions, private universities actually play a broader role in higher education for local youth, vocational education, lifelong learning, and community services. Yet if policy and funding continue to center on flagship national universities, regional private universities will effectively be treated institutionally as second-class citizens.
This is also an issue of fairness in policy. If universities in the same regions face the same population decline, the same difficulties in filling seats, and the same pressure of outflow to the metropolitan area, but opportunities are sharply differentiated simply because their founding bodies differ, it will be difficult to preserve the educational foundations of the regions as a whole. Claiming to respond to regional extinction while institutionally leaving private universities on the periphery is inconsistent with the stated policy goals.
Comparison of the Government’s Plan to Foster Three Flagship National Universities and Market-Friendly Alternatives
4. Review of Overseas Cases and Implications
◩ OECD: The core of regional contribution lies in autonomy and resource structure
In analyzing the regional contribution of higher education institutions, the OECD identified differences in autonomy, financial resources, and the level of control exercised by national planning as key reasons why universities in different countries vary greatly in their ability to respond to regional needs (OECD, 1999). In other words, how much regional universities contribute to their communities depends less on which universities the central government selects and supports and more on how flexibly each university can respond to local demand.
This has direct implications for Korea as well. The direction of regional university policy should not be government-designated flagship university creation, but rather expanding autonomy across higher education so that each institution can develop strategies linked to its own region, market, and industries.
◩ Japan: Regional revitalization-oriented university policy was not a policy only for national and public universities
According to data from the Korean Council for University Education, Japan has sought regional revitalization and local talent retention through region-university linkage policies such as COC, COC+, COC+R, and SPARC (Korean Council for University Education, 2024). These policies addressed regional problem-solving, collaboration with local governments, businesses, and NPOs, higher local employment rates, and educational reform together, and their scope of support was open not only to national and public universities but also to a variety of higher education institutions.
In this regard, the Japanese case is highly instructive because it did not approach the regional university problem solely as “strengthening the competitiveness of a few national universities.” Regional university policy should be premised on the entire regional higher education network and should be an ecosystem policy involving local communities, industry, local governments, and diverse types of universities. Korea as well needs to move beyond the flagship national university-centered framework and adopt an approach that includes regional private universities and junior colleges.
◩ Finland and Norway: The success or failure of mergers depends on how autonomy is designed
A domestic study analyzing university mergers in Finland and Norway concludes that although both countries pursued structural reform, the key was not simple fiscal redistribution but an approach combining autonomy and accountability. Finland promoted performance-based structural reform on the basis of corporatization and expanded autonomy, while Norway, after encountering resistance to a government-led approach, shifted toward placing greater emphasis on voluntary integration (Chae Jaeeun et al., 2019).
This case is highly important for Korea. Structural reform in higher education is more sustainable when universities themselves are able to choose integration, alliances, and functional reorganization, rather than when the government designates and develops a few institutions at the top. In particular, given the structural decline in the school-age population, it is necessary to consider a variety of linkage models that go beyond individual regions and even beyond the metropolitan area/non-metropolitan divide.
5. Conclusion and Policy Implications
Although the Ministry of Education’s latest policy is presented as a strategy to foster regional universities, in substance it is strongly characterized by selective and concentrated support for three flagship national universities. Of course, there is no need to deny the value of attempting to link regional strategic industries with universities. However, if the essence of the regional university crisis lies in the collapse of the overall ecosystem and institutional rigidity, then the solution must lie not in concentrated fiscal support but in structural reform, regulatory innovation, and expanded university autonomy. The solution to the regional university crisis does not lie in pouring massive fiscal resources into a small number of universities designated by the government. The real solution lies in removing regulations so that regional universities as a whole—regardless of whether they are national or private—can survive, allowing voluntary structural reform among universities, and broadening incentives for private participation and investment. In other words, what is needed is not “intensive support for three universities,” but “expanded survival possibilities for more regional universities.”
◩ We must shift to a regional university survival policy that does not distinguish between national and private institutions
To truly solve the regional university crisis, the criteria for support must be changed from founding body to performance, innovative capacity, and regional contribution. If universities in the regions are facing the same enrollment difficulties, the same fiscal pressure, and the same outflow to the metropolitan area simply because they are located outside Seoul, then what matters more than whether they are national or private is what role they play and what kind of innovation they seek to pursue. Accordingly, future regional university policy should move away from designation-based support centered on flagship national universities and be redesigned as a competitive, performance-based system that includes regional private universities and junior colleges. It is necessary to provide fair opportunities across all regional universities based on criteria such as youth employment, linkages with local industry, lifelong learning, community service, and university-industry cooperation outcomes.
◩ Mergers, consolidation, and alliance operations between metropolitan and non-metropolitan universities should be permitted
University restructuring can no longer rely only on integration within regions. As the decline in the school-age population becomes prolonged, much more flexible systems are needed, including joint degrees between metropolitan and regional universities, joint campuses, integrated corporate entities, university alliances, and hybrid remote and in-person course operations. As the cases of Finland and Norway show, the core of structural reform is not administrative coercion but opening the way for voluntary combinations (Chae Jaeeun et al., 2019). Korea also needs to break down barriers between universities and institutionally allow network-based survival strategies that transcend regional boundaries. The survival of regional universities should not be viewed only as “independent survival,” but should be understood more broadly to include “survival through alliance.”
◩ Regulations on regional universities establishing buildings and operating educational bases in the metropolitan area should be relaxed
There is no reason to view regional universities negatively simply because they establish research institutes, university-industry cooperation centers, employment support hubs, startup spaces, lifelong education facilities, or residential learning spaces in the metropolitan area. On the contrary, securing channels that connect regional universities to the metropolitan area—for student recruitment, business linkages, attracting donations, employment connections, and recruiting adult learners—should be seen as a survival strategy. If the establishment of metropolitan bases by regional universities is interpreted unconditionally as encouraging excessive concentration in the capital region, the result will be that regional universities cannot access the markets where students and businesses are concentrated. Operating a main campus in the regions while running some bases in the metropolitan area is not an abandonment of the regions, but an expansion of the regional university’s market. This kind of institutional flexibility is necessary for regional universities to broaden their own revenue models and networks.
◩ University operating regulations should be comprehensively reexamined
For universities to survive, they must have greater autonomy in areas such as enrollment adjustments, departmental mergers and consolidation, faculty management, joint operations with outside institutions, revenue-generating university-industry cooperation projects, asset development, dual degree programs, and the design of contract departments. As the OECD emphasized, the core of regional contribution lies in whether universities can respond on their own with autonomy and resources (OECD, 1999). The future of regional universities should not be left solely to competitive government fiscal support programs; each university must be allowed to move boldly in response to market and regional demand. A sweeping relaxation of university operating regulations is a more fundamental remedy than fiscal support.
◩ Tax benefits and incentives for private investment should be expanded
Regional university policy should move away from dependence on public finance and toward encouraging private-sector participation. To this end, active consideration should be given to measures such as expanding tax credits for donations to regional universities, tax credits for investment in university-industry cooperation, tax support for mixed-use development of university-owned assets for educational and research purposes, and preferential tax treatment for university-based startups and technology commercialization. For regional universities to function as innovation institutions linked to the local economy, there must be incentives not only for government subsidies but also for businesses, alumni, local communities, and investment capital to flow into universities. Regional universities should be transformed from “objects of support” into “investable regional innovation platforms.”
◩ The goal should not be “10 Seoul National Universities,” but “many surviving regional universities”
The goal of regional university policy should not be to cultivate a few symbolic institutions. True balanced development begins not with enlarging the prestige of a handful of universities, but with enabling more regional universities to survive in their own ways and connect with their communities. A strategy of creating several universities resembling Seoul National University is likely to end up merely replicating the centrally designed hierarchy in the regions. By contrast, a policy that enables many regional universities to survive simultaneously strengthens community sustainability, youth settlement, industrial workforce supply, lifelong learning, and the foundations of regional innovation. The philosophy of the policy itself must change.
Original title: 지방국립대 3개 집중육성, 지방대 해법이 될 수 있는가?
Author: Center for Free Enterprise (CFE)
Date: 2026-04-17
Source: https://www.cfe.org/bbs/bbsDetail.php?cid=issue&pn=1&idx=28813