Visions, dreams, innovations, and more. These hopeful and daring words are often used to declare KAIST’s resolution in the coming years as a global leader in the scientific community. Yet the institute’s progress in satisfying its students has been nothing but disappointing. Granted, reform and changes are slow processes taking both patience and effort, but the KAIST administration has left many visible problems untouched. The student body’s dissatisfaction with the AU system is one of the oldest on campus.

KAIST graduation requirements include the completion of at minimum two physical education classes, a total of 4 Activity Units (AU). This requirement has been under the scrutiny of the students since last year, when a problem was brought to light. Though seemingly lenient, many voiced discontent that this requirement was the most difficult to meet — out of all the requirements one must meet as a KAIST student — not because of the difficulty of the classes themselves, but because of the sheer lack of classes available. In an Everytime post, a student lamented that the registration for physical education courses is so competitive that it can even affect one’s graduation plans.

The main problem of the physical education classes originates from the disparity between the limited supply of classes and the ever-increasing demand of the student body. Competition for course registration should be irrelevant as long as the university provides enough classes. But while a new batch of freshmen enter the school every semester, each student with two physical education classes to fulfill, the supply of courses is obviously not keeping up. The number of students registering for these courses every semester exceeds their capacities. Therefore, there always will be a number of students who can’t register. These unmet demands slowly accumulated, a problem that was not too conspicuous until COVID-19. Since the pandemic, many physical education classes shut down, steeply increasing the number of unsatisfied students.

To solve this problem of undersupply, one can increase the supply to meet the demand, or lower the demand to meet the supply. The school has a responsibility to facilitate education, and it would be ideal for its administration to open up more lectures, thus increasing the supply. However, this would require a huge amount of capital: the educators that need to be hired, places and equipment needed for sports, and more. It’s all money. Thus, it would be a long-term goal, unable to resolve the current problem with haste. A more immediate solution would be to lower the demand. This could be achieved by lowering the number of physical education AU credits needed or getting rid of the requirement as a whole. 

Part of the student community even believes the school has no right to enforce such requirements onto the students. In addition, the academic requirements for an average undergraduate have been steadily increasing, all in an effort to become a more successful university. At first, KAIST required classes to be taught in English. Then, having minors became the minimum requirement for graduation. Recently, Korean language requirements became stricter. Despite all these challenges, the requirement for physical education has stayed the same for at least 15 years. Students find it difficult to place the physical education classes in their schedules while struggling to meet the ever-increasing academic requirements.

However, I believe that the school should be allowed to envision what qualities its graduates should possess. For example, Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) requires its students to take swimming classes to graduate. Every university or educational institute is allowed their own requirements. But to foist such a requirement upon students, the school must provide an appropriate environment for them to achieve it. Unlike MIT, KAIST does not have a wide variety of sports lectures nor facilities available for students.

Therefore, KAIST must try to provide higher quality physical education in the long term, while expanding alternative options for students to earn AU credits from other sources such as club activities or military service — an immediate and economic solution. In this way, the administration can avoid a large financial burden while bringing about the beginning of a positive change for the students. So often, KAIST and its students would be described with grandiose adjectives, as the future leaders in a new age of technology and progress. That future will never come if the administration fails to cater to students’ needs and aid their pursuits.