The KAIST Admissions Management Team officially announced the terms and conditions for the 2011 spring semester international students admission last month, stating that successful international bachelor degree applicants will receive monthly allowances of 200,000 Korean won instead of 300,000 won as before.
According to the official announcement on the admissions website, all newly admitted international undergraduate students who are not receiving financial support from any external organizations, firms, or governments will receive KAIST scholarships which exempt them from paying tuition fees for the first year. Students will also receive reduced monthly allowances of 200,000 won regardless of their academic performance for the freshman year.
This monthly allowance reduction has engendered some angry sentiments from the KAIST international student community.
“It is ridiculous to cut off a single penny from our budgets,” stated Talukdar Milton, a third-year student from India, “while the price [of living costs] goes up like a skyrocket here.”
In an interview with Mr. Im Koo Bae of the KAIST Student Affairs Team, he stated that the government funds for the school had recently declined and thus a scholarship reduction was unfortunately necessary. In addition, Mr. Bae also claimed there would be a small portion of students who could receive up to 350,000 won should they show excellent academic performances, even though the criteria for such rewards had not yet been decided by the KAIST Academic Affairs Team.
Currently, many international students at KAIST who come from developing countries must live a very thrifty lifestyle even though they are still receiving the full 300,000 won for monthly allowances.
“[KAIST] should know that 300,000 won three years is very different from [300,000 won] today,” Lkhagvasuren Muugii, a Mongolian freshman, claimed.
Not only does the new scholarship policy anger the current international KAISTians, but it also might discourage some prospective students who wish to apply for KAIST’s bachelor program.
According to Nguyen Van Trung, a Vietnamese senior at KAIST, foreign students were given an extra KRW 2,400,000 aside from a monthly fixed allowance of 300,000 won to help cover initial expenses such as airfare, laptops, or books as they first arrived at KAIST in spring 2007. However the amount of this extra money decreased to 1,200,000 won in spring 2009 before completely vanishing in fall 2009.
In order to help financially-troubled foreign students, KAIST has offered several part-time jobs for which students are assigned to work in places such as the library and the International Relations Team. However, demand for such jobs usually outnumbers the available slots.
In contrast to the reduction in bachelor students’ scholarships, successful master’s and Ph.D. candidates next semester will still receive monthly allowances of 300,000 won. In addition to these fixed amounts, they will also receive some extra allowances that will be paid by the laboratory which they are working at.