Following the recent recruitment crisis in two-year colleges, especially in rural areas, deeper consideration in understanding and in building sincere relationships between those two-year colleges, the supply side on human resources development, and the industries, the demand side on human resources development, has been amounted, thereby raising important questions on their mutual functions to foster their regional development.
The study was undertaken in its behalf of Korean college level vocational department management, especially those of two-year colleges. The main objective of this study was to identify the main determinants of competitiveness of two-year colleges in order to construct an understandably comprehensive connection framework to regional industrial demand on human resources by empirically assessing the extent to which various different factors contribute to academic competitiveness.
The study departs from the notion that recent growth of two-year colleges, together with higher employment rates of their graduates which appear mostly cosmetic, have created both opportunities and threats to two-year colleges in Korea. On one hand, competitiveness in regional areas continues to increase while on the other hand, other educational institutions such as, universities, various job training centers, and private institutes for vocational training are increasingly challenging two-year colleges the once protected and accepted as vested regional manpower producers. Not only in the environment within which two-year colleges operate volatile but the pace of change is also accelerating with rapid advances in human resources demand.
The study which provides theoretical frameworks for the improvement of two-year college departments develops a conceptual understanding to explain the determinants of competitiveness of each two-year college department and offers further research propositions.
To identify this understanding and to explain what they are doing in each region, various study approaches are adopted. Reviews on the related literature and on study reports, use of those statistics generated by the central and regional governments, questionnaire surveys over two-year college departments, searching best practice cases of department management in coping successfully with industrial demand on human resources in some regions, interviews with those concerned in two-year colleges and in regional governments, hearings on committee members pre-organized for the study, and several consulting processes provided by the advising professor, were the major study activities.
The understanding posits that each regional development is affected by the industrial human resources orientation in the region, extent of competitive department's innovation in two-year colleges, organizational structures of the industries and of two-year college departments, governmental human resources development policies, and access to capital, as well as individual efforts towards regional development.
In this highly competitive and fast changing environment, only colleges that are efficient, flexible, innovative, and responsive to changes can survive. The followings are the conceptual understanding aiming further improvement of college department management by directly connecting its educational resources and abilities to the industrial demand on human resources.
First, the study shows several internal and external factors that impact on the abilities of two-year colleges to compete successfully in human resources development by connecting their educational efforts directly and deeply to the industrial needs in the region. There include the role of the demand side in using human resources, the connection structures between colleges and industries, as well as the capabilities of the both.
Second, in order for policy makers and decision makers such as department heads in two-year colleges to insure sustained growth of the college departments in the long term, it is instructive to, first of all, identify the dynamism in fostering regional developments by connecting colleges to the industries.
Third, we argue that generally the pursuit of dynamic upgrading that allows two-year colleges to maintain their competitiveness may be the result of collegial efforts to connect the educational process to the industrial sites, the final home of human resources. We also put forward the importance of the role of the central government in stimulating regional efforts and in building a strong relational system of innovation between colleges and industrial sites.
We take the view that the role of two-year colleges is path-dependent. This is particularly relevant when considering the effects of the industrial demand on human resources and of actual employment for college graduates.
A wide collection of empirical studies on college department management informs us of diverse developmental paths. In the wake of recruitment crisis, we expect to observe a general trend among two-year colleges to undertake down-turn style reforms including shrinks of departmental and institutional efforts in human resource development similar to those under way in Japan.
Although the extent and pace of such reforms will differ among two-year colleges, several important questions arise with respect to these anticipated reforms. Are they generally appropriate and do they enhance the competitiveness of two-year college departments, taking into account the context within which two-year colleges regionally operate and compete? The proposition made above may have the potentials to produce important findings that can be valuable on the development of two-year college departments aimed at restoring their competitiveness in regional development by harmonizing enterprises' demand on human resources.
The final conclusion is a quick-disseminating, affirmative suggestion meant to stimulate discussion and elicit feedback for the better management of vocational department in Korean two-year colleges. It's time for two-year colleges to think big to avoid nightmare scenarios by which they will survive if another baby boom comes up.