“The Age of 10-million won Tuition”, “880-Thousand won Genaration”
These sayings indicate the university students in Korea nowadays, and express the present circumstance which they are going through. “I’ve paid my school expenses through school expenses loan. I feel deep pressure on the money for the tuition fee. These days, seeing senior students’ struggle for getting a job, I get more concerns about my future.” ○○○(Senior, School of Mechanical and Automotive Engineering), a Kookminian who didn't want his real name to be known, answered with an anxious voice.
According to the statistics from the Ministry of Education, Science and Technology, the number of debtors who didn’t pay off the school expenses loan in 2009 increases four times more than the number of debtors in 2007 (3,724 to 13,804). Korean Government will carry out a financing program for students, Income Contingent Loans (ICL), as a drastic solution to resolve the difficulties in the existing loan system of school expenses. It will be carried into effect in the fall semester this year. Under the envisioned system, student borrowers would be allowed to repay the principal and interest in installments after gaining employment and securing a regular income, thus eliminating the possibility of defaults. However, people are discontent with ICL for some reason. What reasons brought this situation?
The ICL which will be carried into effect on fall semester sets its standards for beneficiaries to get a B on an total grade average or 6 grade on College Scholastic Ability Test. ICL is introduced to help students from low-income families, but the interest rate is fixed 5.7 percent a year. The biggest reason why this interest system is under finger-pointing, is that if the tuition fee raged 32,000,000 won, the total increase in interests will be 85,000,000 won during 28 years. By comparison, Japan offers interest-free loans to help students paying the tuition.
In compared with the other countries’ loan systems, the United Kingdom operates a specific authority named SLC to administer the Student Loan System, and there is no time limit on repayment as Korea’s. The most important point is that all students are eligible for requesting loans. Looking into the Student Loan System of U.S, several applicant requirements exist like Korea’s. But the unredeemed repayments are exempt from the total repayments, if the student is lack of ability to repay all the repayments in 25 years. The Australia's Student Loan System is introduced in 1989, even though their system has a due for redemption but it's inimitable that the beneficiary who earns fluctuating income pays back the repayment, they’re given 10 percent discount on total amount of repayments.
According to a survey made by an employment portal site, Job Korea, 80.8% of 1,179 university graduates answered “I have applied for a job I would prefer not to have, because I want to pay off the debt as soon as possible.” Like this, the stress from the tuition debt influences students’ job taking. A lot of university students have been hard up for material problem that causes graduate students to be hard to follow their dreams and the opportunity of learning.
THE KOOKMIN REVIEW hope this newly applied program would progress in the right direction, so that it could be helpful to students and their family finances. Furthermore, we hope that it could solve the old social phenomenon- the bequeathing poverty due to lack of education.

- THE KOOKMIN REVIEW No.215 - March 22, 2010
- Park Jin Ah(Editor in Chief) skypark@kookmin.ac.kr