The University of Seoul (UOS) stands out for its generous tuition fee policy. It is the only university in Seoul to maintain the “half-price,” which is half of most national universities in Korea. Also, UOS has been one of the few universities to charge an equal amount of tuition fees to domestic and international students. From this year, however, UOS no longer holds one of the two titles – by choosing to increase the tuition for international students.

          On October 12th, 2021, UOS announced its plan to increase the international students’ tuition – by 100 percent for undergraduate students, and 20 percent for graduate students. The students subject to the raise are the foreign students who entered UOS as a degree course on or after spring 2022; tuition for students who entered before 2022 stays the same. Also, there is no change in the fee for exchange students and the Korean Language and Culture Program. After the raise, UOS has been charging between 2 million KRW (humanities and social science major) and 3.2 million KRW (music major) per semester to foreign freshmen from spring 2022.

          The reason behind the tuition fee raise is “to finance the enforced support for the international students,” as quoted from the interview with the UOS Accounting Team, who added, “the support includes newly opened Korean language lessons and academic courses in English.” Also, the interviewee added, the university will increase the scholarship beneficiary rate for international students to ease the financial burden. However, although the new international students have paid the doubled tuition twice already, there has not been any notice of change in international students’ scholarships to date.

          According to Chosun Ilbo, eight out of ten popular universities in Seoul have increased tuition for international students over the last three years. Therefore, UOS is not the only university to increase the tuition for students from overseas. Still, the increase rate of UOS, the maximum of 200 percent, is unlike any other. Other universities including Korea University and Chungang University have decided to charge from five to seven percent more to foreign students. Taking the reluctance from the students into consideration, UOS decided to apply the increase only to the newly admitted students.

          Most universities in Korea have fixed the tuition fee for domestic students for the last 14 years because of government policy. Only the universities that have not raised the tuition fee compared to the previous year have been eligible for Government Grant Type II from Korea Student Aid Foundation (KOSAF) since 2009. Government Grant Type II is given directly to educational institutions, and the institution may grant the money to the students in need. Universities have been choosing to fix the tuition fee rather than raising it and losing the Government Grant. However, a rise in tuition for international students does not expire eligibility, hence the flexible tuition for international students.