About the Reorganization
Last December, Sungkyunkwan University (SKKU) announced a plan to expand and reorganize the College of Computing into the College of Computing and Informatics from this semester. In addition, SKKU decided to integrate the School of Convergence, which originally belonged to the SKKU Institute for Convergence, into the College of Computing and Informatics. This reorganization results in one college belonging to both the Humanities and Social Sciences Campus and the Natural Sciences Campus. The main purpose of this reform is to combine the educational capabilities of artificial intelligence (AI) and data science that can nurture creative convergence talents for the era of the 4th Industrial Revolution. the financial status of the SKKU Institute for Convergence is expected to improve through the reformation.
Controversies Surrounding the Reorganization
1. Unilateral Decision of the School
SKKU decided upon and applied the reform without having enough communication with the applicable students, although the change is a crucial issue. Professors also had many complaints because the school did not discuss the reorganization even with them. Student councils of some departments tried to hear students’ opinions, but it was useless because overall reorganization was already decided. As a following suggestion, students who oppose the decision get a chance to remain at their original college. Therefore, some students decided to remain at the existing College of Computing. Students from the School of Convergence, however, had no choice but to follow the school’s decision as they were told that there might be disadvantages regarding curriculums if they remained in their initial college. Like this, the school’s unilateral decision resulted in a lot of confusion.
2. Difficulties of Managing the Reorganized College
The way of running the student council after the reorganization was also problematic. A united council seemed impossible and ineffective due to the difficulty of fee distribution caused by different amounts of council fees from each department and physical differences between the campuses. Therefore, they decided to run the council independently. Also, many students are worried about whether it is proper to reorganize irrelevant majors into one college since determining the level of classes is difficult as the importance of coding and AI varies among the majors.
For the Better College of Computing and Informatics
The main reason for the disputes was the school’s lack of consideration of various situations afterward. Although students did not have any power throughout the decision, pointless criticisms and ridicule continue appearing on the online school community. In this unexpected situation, it is necessary to communicate rather than criticize each other. They should find ways to create synergy, but it is also important for each department to be managed independently. In this way, this reform will not result in ambiguous convergence education, and each department will be able to keep its unique features.
