How national scholarships are awarded has been controversial since 2012, and students voice their anger at the start of every new semester. Although changed to the process in 2015 seemed to alleviate some of the problems, many still consider the income calculation method used to choose scholarship recipients flawed. 

The national scholarship program was started in 2012 under the control of the Korean Student Aid Foundation (KOSAF) and under the supervision of the South Korean government. The program was established to provide sufficient financial support to students who might not otherwise be able to afford attending university. 

Of the different types of national scholarship, the Type I and II national scholarships are the most common types, almost any student can apply for them. Both scholarships are distributed according to student family incomes and student grades. All applicants of the financial aid need a grade point average (GPA) of more than 80 out of 100, and among those who meet the grade criteria, students with lower family incomes can receive more aid than those with higher family incomes. Students are classified into different percentiles depending on how much money their family earns in a year. 

The problem comes from how the family income is calculated, and this problem mostly arises from Type I scholarship, which is the most common type among several national scholarship types. Many have questioned the method of calculating student family incomes and claim that it is leading to the wrong people receiving the scholarships. 

Prior to 2015, when the KOSAF first modified the income calculation method, all the information needed for the calculation came from the National Health Insurance Corporation (NHIC). This information included family’s assets and income, but the calculation method did not include financial assets such as bonds and stocks that have a direct influence on the real income of the family. Moreover, the KOSAF did not reveal how the exact calculation was done, leaving students and their families in the dark. 

KOSAF took such complaints and, starting in 2015, included all a family’s financial assets when calculating its income. In addition, KOSAF now looks at financial information provided by 44 different organizations, resulting in a change in percentile for 70 percent of the students who had applied for a national scholarship before. KOSAF, referring to such change argued that “the calculation method has become more impartial and accurate.” However, Yeon Dukwon, a researcher at the Korea Higher Education Research Institute (KHEI), said that “such change does not take us anywhere,” and that “even if there has been a change in the percentiles, we can’t say they were the right changes.” He has also commented that the current system fails to deal with the biggest issues regarding national scholarships. 

One of the unsolved problem of this program is the KOSAF’s vague definition of being poor and rich. Although the KOSAF insists that the scholarship distribution has “become more accurate and impartial,” students are not satisfied with what they receive. One student commented that, “It is so unfair to see how students receive different amount of national scholarship when in reality the living standards of most students are just about the same.” Another student added, “The calculated family income is very unrealistic and that generally the calculated income is much higher than it really is, preventing many students from receiving reasonable amount of national scholarship.”

▲ The Korean Student Aid Foundation logo. Provided by culine.co.kr

▲ People protesting against faulty national scholarship. Provided by ohmynews.com

Another unsolved problem of national scholarship is when the money goes to the wrong person – someone who is affluent. This issue has been around before the change in the calculation method took place, and despite the change in the calculation system, this problem has yet been solved. According to Hankook Ilbo, KOSAF does not take the foreign income of each family into account. Due to this, affluent students may turn out to be poor on paper just because their parents work abroad. “I cannot say that I am unhappy with the amount of financial aid I receive from the national scholarship program,” said a student who, on paper, falls into the lowest percentile, “but I am pretty sure that I should not fall into this percentile. It would have been a different story if my parents worked here in Korea.”

“The method of calculation itself is flawed,” said Yeon. “This is the best the current system can do, and it cannot get any better. The efficiency of this method has reached its limit.” He added that the current method of calculation is “cruel for students since even if you are slightly more affluent than the others, you lose your chance of receiving the scholarship. If you want to receive enough scholarship, you need to be extremely poor, even if there is not much real difference among those in different percentiles.”

Yeon first pointed out at the lack of information of the data used by the KOSAF to distribute the money. According to the statistics in 2013, only 62.7 percent of the students eligible to apply for the national scholarship applied for the program. “Generally it’s the poor students who apply for the scholarship. Those who are rich both in reality and on paper don’t even bother applying.” He added that “since it’s these poor students that compete for the financial aid, it’s difficult for students on the edge of poverty line to receive any scholarship from the government.”

He also slammed the unreasonable method of including part-time job wages of student. “It is common knowledge that college tuition fees in Korea is extremely high and many students have to spare time doing part-time jobs to afford such high fees,” said Yeon. “The problem is, these realistically low wages unreasonably increase your family income and your percentile. Students will either have to give up the parttime job or the scholarship. The flawed system of calculating the part-time job wage makes the students difficult to have both of them, when they actually need both of them.”

The KOSAF replied to all accusations by saying that “none of the problems students call upon are true,” and that “all the information provided by the students are taken into consideration before distributing the money to the right people.” Yet it is not uncommon to find students frustrated by the percentile they are put in. Yeon commented that, in order to achieve the proclaimed goal of the national scholarship program – helping students to study with lesser financial difficulty -- “The government should look for alternative ways of rendering financial aid to students by actually decreasing the tuition fees instead of clumsily looking for students who need money.”

▲ Yeon Dukwon, a research staff at the Korea Higher Education Research Institute. Photographed by Lee Hye Min.