Abstract

This paper is an attempt to argue for the necessity of thinking about the idea of the university as a precondition for discussing the future of the university in Korea. The prevailing discourse on university reform calls for professionalization of learning and utilization of knowledge, subsuming education process under the capitalist logic of marketization and competition. I argue that this is one-sided and even dangerous as it neglects the role of higher education in formation and cultivation of the mind. Furthermore, it intensifies the sense of crisis in higher education in general and in humanities divisions in particular. Rather than simply accepting the market forces of change as the inevitable future of universities in Korea, this future has to be an open question to be discussed and debated. The work of re-imagining the university in Korea that I present here requires two historical examinations: First, an examination of the history of universities in the West as a history of ideas about the university; second, an examination of the Confucian higher education, embodied through the education at Sunggyungwan, as a model of higher education whose merits have to be discussed and evaluated. I conclude this paper by suggesting that the question of “What Is a University?” is a necessary question and that the future of higher education in Korea has to begin by responding to this very question.