UST President Kang Dae-im’s unconventional experiment “Creating Value is the Way of Technicians” Without a thesis, there’s a means to return even when the corporate fails to design verification standards corresponding to attracting a doctoral diploma and attracting Series A. Changes within the identify of the establishment to increase consciousness
![Kang Dae-im, president of the United Graduate School of Science and Technology (UST). [Photo = UST]](https://wimg.mk.co.kr/news/cms/202509/08/news-p.v1.20250825.7dbebc2a199e44c6a9629f79c07d5b3c_P1.jpg)
“We want to cultivate scientific and technological talents that create value. What I’m particularly interested in is starting a business. This is because start-ups bloom research results into useful social, economic, and cultural values. If a student starts a business based on deep tech (leading technology), I’ll give you a master’s and doctorate without a thesis.”
Kang Dae-im, president of the University of Science and Technology (UST), mentioned in a current interview with Mail Business, “The only way for Korea to live is to start a business.” In academia, it is not uncommon to write and submit papers to receive a grasp’s and doctorate diploma. Against this backdrop, President Kang set an unconventional situation for acquiring a level.
UST is an academic establishment beneath the Ministry of Science and ICT and is a graduate college of nationwide analysis institutes that grants graduate features to 34 government-funded analysis institutes, together with the Institute of Basic Science (IBS), the Korea Institute of Science and Technology (KIST), and the Korea Institute of Biotechnology, to obtain field-oriented training. Germany’s Max Planck International Research School was established in 2003 as a number one mannequin and celebrated its twenty second anniversary this yr.
Kang took workplace in February. Previously, he labored on the Korea Institute of Standards and Science as an skilled in mass and drive measurement and was the pinnacle of the establishment, and is taken into account to have gone by means of industry-academic relationships, together with the vp of Daegu Gyeongbuk Institute of Science and Technology (DGIST) and the CEO of startup Hexa.
Based on this expertise, Kang, who was appointed as UST president, is focusing his efforts on nurturing science and expertise talents who’re changing into more and more essential. In reality, he emphasised the necessity to cultivate science and expertise talents even earlier than his appointment and actively supported UST when searching for college websites. Currently, the UST website has been leased freed from cost by the Korea Institute of Standards and Science for 100 years, and it’s recognized that President Kang took the lead in serving to it whereas serving on the Korea Institute of Standards and Science.
President Kang mentioned, “UST has been serving as a supplier of science and technology talents by walking a new path that was not in Korea as a graduate school of national research institutes.” The variety of grasp’s and doctorate graduates from UST is about 4000 to date. Of these, about 30% have been employed by corporations and about 10% have been employed by contributors, reaching a 94% employment charge. President Kang defined, “We have produced many academic professors, and there are many graduates from major universities or research institutes abroad.”
![Kang Dae-im, president of the United Graduate School of Science and Technology (UST). [Photo = UST]](https://wimg.mk.co.kr/news/cms/202509/08/news-p.v1.20250825.bec35fc995944653bf9178b9d6fbde0c_P1.jpg)
President Kang’s UST targeted on fostering science and expertise talents on value-creating talents. It goals to cultivate those that create worth by beginning a enterprise. President Kang mentioned, “Students who started their own businesses with deep tech technology will act as CEOs and share their shares with the donation association or its researchers. Through this, we will distribute the risks that students have and actively support their start-ups.”
The particular circumstances for acquiring a grasp’s and doctoral diploma by means of entrepreneurship are presently beneath dialogue. “We will go through verification with conditions such as receiving Series A investment,” President Kang mentioned. “We will even come up with a system that allows students to return even if they fail to start a business.”
Kang vowed to stop the outflow of home science and expertise expertise and create a faculty the place overseas expertise flows in. He mentioned, “UST PhD students receive about 4 million won a month, so the treatment is not bad, and the research environment is also characterized by the use of the state-of-the-art equipment of the cast. This is a weak point that is not well known.”
UST has 1,558 lecturers, together with 1,378 full-time lecturers. “They are teachers with the best expertise in their respective fields,” President Kang mentioned. “We will also focus on improving the quality of teachers by introducing the youth system or the chair professor system.”
We will additional improve the advantages and assist that go to college students and contribute to cultivating high-quality science and expertise talents in Korea by informing them broadly, he mentioned. “We will also increase the number of science and technology talents that can be supplied to local companies by utilizing about 60 local branches of the donation association.”
Meanwhile, UST is presently searching for to change the identify of the group. Instead of the Graduate School of the Union of Science and Technology, it will likely be renamed the Graduate School of the National Institute of Science and Technology. President Kang mentioned, “We plan to continue to push for the name change of the institution to raise UST awareness.”
Reporter Ko Jae-won of Daejeon