대학특성화 평가의 정치학적 분석

초록

The rapid changes surrounding higher education institutions have made the specialization of universities an inevitable policy option. In South Korea, the specialization policy has changed the landscape of higher education institutions along with power struggle and conflict of interests, as it is combined with financial support by the central government. The purpose of this paper is to analyze the evaluation measures to select beneficiary universities from the lenses of politics of education. Based on the theoretical frame suggested by Danziger, we tried to reveal the phenomena surrounding evaluation criteria, the number of selected universities, and the amount of distributed budget. Our analyses show that the government has exercised the power over the universities by deciding the rules of evaluation games such as setting evaluation criteria and assigning scores to each criteria. In this process there are much dispute and conflict of interests between the government and universities not to mention of among universities themselves, which are typical characteristics of political process. The conflict has extended to stakeholders within universities surrounding scarce resources. The analyses reveal the hidden side of evaluation as a political process rather than an objective and rational process. Based on the findings, we discuss the possibilities and limitations of government interventions inducing university specialization.

키워드