Following in the wake of the State University of New York (SUNY) Korea, a dozen world-renowned universities are rushing to locate their branches at Songdo Global University Campus (SGUC) in the Incheon Free Economic Zone (IFEZ).
The IFEZ authority has invested a total of 1.07 trillion won ($939.91 million) to build the SGUC on a 295,000 square meter-site, and is coordinating details with ten foreign universities.
SUNY Korea, which opened last month, offers masters and doctoral courses in the fields of technology management and computer science, the curricula of which are taught by professors dispatched by SUNY Stony Brook. This year's fifty-four freshmen, including the forty-seven enrolled on the graduate program and the seven on the doctoral program, will be granted the same degree as students studying the corresponding curricula at SUNY Stony Brook.
The U.S.'s George Mason University has filed for approval by the Ministry of Education, Science and Technology (MEST) to establish a branch at the SGUC with the aim of launching its undergraduate program from March 2013.
The University of Utah has also entered into discussions with the IFEZ authority with a view to providing undergraduate and graduate programs in natural science, social science and humanities from September 2013.
Other American universities currently in discussions with the authority include the University of Illinois and Alfred University.
Not only U.S.-based universities but a number of overseas institutions are working to open branches at the SGUC. Belgium's Ghent University is on track to obtain the approval of the MEST, in order to start an undergraduate academic curriculum for bio science, environment and food engineering from March 2014, after signing an MOU with the IFEZ authority last October.
Russia's Saint-Petersburg University also concluded a basic agreement with
the IFEZ authority last March and formed a taskforce team to negotiate the opening
schedules and academic curricula.
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Source: Yonhap News (Mar. 26, 2012)