KAIST has been announced as one of ten Korean universities set to participate in the upcoming international program, "Campus Asia," which will commence in 2012. This program will allow students from KAIST to study at other universities in China and Japan in order to earn joint degrees from multiple institutes.

 

Campus Asia is modeled after Europe's "Erasmus Mundus," which allows university students to gain dual or multiple degrees from at least three different universities in European Union member countries. Campus Asia, also referred to as "Asian Erasmus," is designed to allow students to study overseas without additional tuition fees. It also aims to promote credit recognition, joint diplomas and faculty exchange.

 

This exchange program is a follow-up of agreements made by leaders of South Korea, China and Japan during a summit meeting in Jeju Island last May. The three nations promised to increase educational exchange in order to create an East Asian Community. Their key objectives are to strengthen economic collaboration and consolidate partnership between universities in a wide range of fields.

 

For the Campus Asia program, the Ministry of Education and the Korean Council for University Education will provide the chosen Korean universities with 124 million Korean Won for student exchange expenses and 100 million Korean Won for program development costs from 2012 to 2015. The participating students will receive 800,000 Korean Won roundtrip flight tickets and about 900,000 Korean Won monthly living expenses for one year. The project development funds are also provided to the institutes in order to promote the recruitment of teaching assistants, revision of provided curricula and operation of language programs to assist international students.

 

The participating Korean Universities include Seoul National University, Korea University, Sungkyunkwan University, POSTECH and KAIST. KAIST's consortium, TKT CAMPUS Asia Consortium, also includes Tsinghua University and the Tokyo Institute of Technology. The main objective of this coalition is to establish a joint research-oriented educational program.

 

According to Ministry officials, the administrative process of Campus Asia will be completed by the end of the year and students will be able to apply starting from 2012.