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The Anti-Corruption and Civil Rights Commission’s investigation reveals that 10 national universities in South Korea allegedly misappropriated KRW9.4 billion of students’ tuition fees. The funds were intended to cover student guidance programmes and safety activities carried out by professors and staff during lunch hours, after work or on weekends. Employees at one of the national universities overstated the number of such activities by changing locations and clothes earning KRW1.2 billion.

South Korea’s newly elected president has made breaking down the near-monopoly of the country’s top universities on the best jobs a cornerstone of his campaign and has repeated a pledge made by different parties in past elections to bring down tuition fees – which are among the highest in the world. In particular, he said he will tackle the ‘old boys’ network’ and dominance of the country’s top-ranked universities in securing the best jobs in business and politics for their alumni, in order to improve prospects for young graduates outside the capital, Seoul.

Private and public universities in South Korea have engaged in creative accounting practices resulting in excessive hikes in tuition fees, the state audit agency said. Wrapping up an investigation into 35 randomly chosen universities, including nine public institutions, the Board of Audit and Inspection said the institutions had habitually manipulated their accounting books over the past five years to justify steep rises in tuition expenses.