Most of the expansion of higher education was shouldered by private higher education institutions, with 78 percent of university students and 96 percent of professional school students enrolled at private institutions (2002). As a result of the small amount of public subsidies for private universities (about 3 percent of private university expenditures) and the collection of tuition fees by national universities in addition to the overwhelming abundance of private institutions, higher education costs in the ROK are supported by private sector funds. Public financial expenditures on higher education as a percentage of GDP is 0.6 percent, a very low figure, while privately-financed higher education fees are about three times higher at 1.9 percent (OECD statistics, 2000).
The government will expand public financial expenditures and has devised a plan for the effective allocation of those expenditures to improve the quality of universities. As mentioned above, the government has introduced evaluation-based subsidies such as Brain Korea 21 and subsidies to public and private universities for educational reforms, and is looking into reform plans based on evaluations of the budgets of national universities.
