Seoul National University to set up first overseas campus in Vietnam

Seoul National University (SNU), South Korea’s top-ranked higher education institution, is pursuing the setup of its first overseas campus in Vietnam. 

The plan is to select the top Vietnamese students among those who completed the undergraduate program at its Ho Chi Minh City campus and have them continue with their master's degrees and beyond in Korea. 

The university recently released a mid- to long-term development plan in which it included the plan to work with the Viet Nam National University in Ho Chi Minh City to set up a joint university in Vietnam's largest city within five years. 

It is but one example of the creative approaches Korean universities are taking to attract graduate students amid a plummeting local birth rate. 

Seoul National forecasts a dearth of Korean graduate students by the 2030s.

Korea's university student age population is projected to plummet to 1.87 million in 2030 from 2.26 million last year, according to Statistics Korea.

If and when established, the Ho Chi Minh City campus will be the first full-fledged overseas university campus set up by Korea’s No.1-ranked university. 

Previously, Seoul National has organized special courses in Mongolia and in parts of Africa. 

Persons familiar with the development told The Korea Economic Daily that working-level talks will kick off when a new university president is appointed later this year. 

Once the Vietnam branch is deemed successful, Seoul National plans to set up other joint universities elsewhere over the next 10 years, most likely in Southeast Asia and Central Asia. 

At the same time, the university is considering ways to gradually reduce the number of undergraduate students. 

Experts say the fact that Korea's most coveted university is already thinking about dealing with the population decline shows that the situation is even worse for the national universities located outside of Seoul and for private universities nationwide. 

A whopping 82 of the 118 private universities in Korea, or 72% of the total, recorded an operating loss in 2020.

Write to Jin-gyu Kang at josep@hankyung.com
Jee Abbey Lee edited this article.