In March 2016, POSTECH Admissions announced a new policy that will be applied to freshmen entering in 2018 or later. The new policy was including that every freshman will enter POSTECH without their major declared excluding students majoring in Creative IT Engineering (CiTE). Since the new admission policy has been announced, there are various speculations about how college life for freshmen in 2018 will differ from students who entered POSTECH before.
Especially, there will be an inevitable change in education course for freshmen. Current basic required course includes General Physics I and II, General Chemistry, General Life Science, Calculus, Applied Linear Algebra, and Programming & Problem Solving. Also, there is an honor course in General Physics and General Life Science for students who have a major that requires high level of knowledge. On the other hand, there is an introductory course in General Physics for students with a major that does not require high level of physics knowledge.
It was previously known to be each department opening an introductory class related with their major, to relieve difficulties that freshmen might experience while choosing their major. However, according to the Director Oh Chang-Seon, Educational Affairs and Records, academic policy is still under consideration and will change synthetically afterwards.
In July 2016, Basic Education Committee was established to discuss in earnest about the changes in academic policy from 2018, consisted of Vice President of Faculty Affairs and one member from each department. Since the committee was established, there were four official meetings until now.
According to the Director Oh, basic required courses will be reformed aiming for three goals; separation of basic required courses to required and elective, raising the required credit of basic required course, and providing the flexibility to select in basic elective course. There are any confirmed, precise plan to achieve the goals above till this present.
There were few measures that were examined through the committee. Dividing Introductory / General / Honor course for each subject is one of the measure that is being examined in the committee. Switching ‘II ’ classes including General Physics II to elective course was also examined, but it is known to be disapproved by Department of Physics. Director Oh mentioned that it is quite early to divide confirmed and unconfirmed details, and announce officially about the reformed course at this point.
KAIST may be the role model in terms of being specialized in natural science and engineering, and the first college in Korea to select every new student without their major declared. KAIST is currently providing three basic courses for physics and chemistry, and two courses for biology, calculus, and computer programming so that students can choose classes depending on their major and knowledge.
As the committee is examining, providing a wide pool of elective course seems to be the proper direction of reformed basic course. Anyways, the reformed course should be available to help freshmen find their aptitude and get interested in natural science and engineering.