A total of 52 research teams at 18 Korean universities have been selected as beneficiaries of 830 billion won in government funding over the next five years under the World Class University project, newly launched by the Ministry of Education, Science and Technology earlier this year. 

Selections were made from among 314 research applications submitted by 52 universities, over three-stage evaluation procedure(expert panel review-international peer review-comprehensive panel review by the WCU Project Management Committee) led by the Korea Science and Engineering Foundation.

WCU had invited the participation of international scholars and researchers according to three project types: first, recruiting scholars to establish new academic departments or specialized majors in Korean universities; second, employing foreign scholars at existing academic programs; and third, inviting distinguished world-class scholars to teach and research in Korea.

This year, 26 teams have been selected at 13 universities each for the first and second project types.  The beneficiaries will conduct research on high-tech fusion technologies including those that will support Korea's national goal to achieve “low carbon and green growth.”  Beneficiaries of the first type will be allowed to increase their student admission quota for graduate-level programs, without having to suffice requirements to secure a certain amount of professors, land, facilities and property when increasing the student number.  

Accordingly, the gross graduate admission quota at the 13 beneficiary universities is expected to grow by 900 students in the coming semester.

According to the third project type, two Nobel laureates have also been invited to teach and research in Korea.  Carlo Rubbia of the European Organization for Nuclear Research and George Smoot of UC Berkeley, winners of the 1984 and 2006 Nobel Prize in physics, will teach at Sungkyunkwan University and Ewha Womans University, respectively.

These two scholars included, WCU has invited a total of 284 top-notch international academics including 45 ethnic Koreans, who will function as a “change agent” to innovate the academic atmosphere of the Korean higher education sector.  The Ministry expects that the WCU project will contribute to raising the research capacity of Korean universities to global standards, and at the same time provide means of switching the phenomenon of brain drain to brain gain.