Korea Univesity (KU) has three kinds of general education courses—core, selectional, and major-related. KU students must take three out of six fields from the core general education courses to graduate. However, the 47th Korea University Student Association (KUSA), Jieum has proposed the abolition of core general education courses as one of its policies, and the student body is confused by the news.

When students enter the university, they take general education courses. Obviously, the reasonable aim is to help university students to be cultured and have suitable knowledge, and to grow up as healthy adults. However, when these courses are not voluntary but mandatory, the process becomes unreasonable.
 
Jieum therefore says that the core general education courses should be abolished. To begin with, the current courses do not follow their original intention. The purpose of such courses at KU was to give students an equal chance to get academic training in various fields such as culture, history, and science, as well as to think about living as human beings. However, Jieum argues that under the current system, students inevitably experience inequality. The fields of Korea University’s (KU) core general education courses tend to place greater emphasis on liberal arts, considering that there are only two natural science fields out of six. As a result, liberal arts students have an advantage over natural science students, because they are simply extending their major.
 
   
 
According to Jieum, there is a shortage of courses that all students want to take. KU enrollment is about 20,900 students, with 3,800 freshmen. However, this year, only 76 courses opened, which is insufficient to meet the needs of KU students. As a result, the school has no choice but to increase the size of each class. Indeed, many of the courses accept more than 150 students. Consequently, the quality of the class is lowered, according to Jieum.
 
These are the reasons why Jieum wants to abolish the core general education courses and integrate them with selectional courses and reclassify them all together. The president of Jieum, Seo Jae Woo (‘12, Industrial Management Engineering) said, “I think we have to be able to choose what we want to study. The core general education courses, however, limit our right to study what we want. Jieum will try hard to alleviate such chronic problems.”
 
Other student associations hesitate to complain about the core general education courses because Jieum has not officially indicated their stance yet. Only after Jieum’s official announcement and collecting other KU students’ opinions, will the argument between Jieum and the student society go ahead, hopefully alleviating this confusion.
 
   
 
Meanwhile, there is a voice which differs from the abolition or not route and points out a rather fundamental issue. The 45th president of the College of Education Student Association SEEnergy, Park Lae Hyun (‘12, History Education) said, “To solve the problems caused by the dilemma of core general education courses, the important thing is not to unconditionally expand the size of each class, but to improve conditions of taking them, so that the quality of the courses goes up.” He pointed out that the purpose of implementing core general education courses is definite, whereas how the courses are selected is somewhat indefinite. According to Park, decision makers have to consider whether the courses reflect thoughts of KU students who are the subjects of learning.
 
It is not the first time that core general education courses have surfaced in KU student society. Every time the topic has been broached, it has been the center of attention of KUSA and the student body. In 2013, as students kept insisting that it was too burdensome to take four core general education courses, the required number of courses to take has been decreased to three. It is entirely natural for students to react sensitively with the matter of core general education courses because it is directly related to their course registration and graduation. In the same context, this problem, therefore, has to be solved in the short term.
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