Kyung Hee University and Jeonju Vision College win grand prizes as six leading universities are selected for international-student employment and startup support

The Ministry of Education selected six leading universities that help international students with employment, entrepreneurship and regional settlement. Kyung Hee University was chosen in the four-year-university category and Jeonju Vision College in the junior-college category, while Kangwon National University, Kyungbok University, Kyungsung University and Chungnam National University were named as best-practice universities.

The call was established for the first time to identify university operating cases that connect international students not merely with recruitment but also with jobs and regional life after graduation. The Ministry of Education's plan had a structure of selecting one grand-prize institution and two excellent institutions each among four-year universities and junior colleges.

What was evaluated

There were four evaluation areas: employment links, entrepreneurship links, regional-settlement support and global networks. The proposal evaluation comprised 30 points for strategy, 20 for specificity, 30 for effectiveness and 20 for scalability. What mattered was not a declaration that a project would be carried out, but how it explained actual participants and procedures and how results would be confirmed.

The background figure the Ministry of Education stated in the call plan is the employment rate of international students. It rose from 21.7% in 2023 to 33.4% in 2024, but the process of linking international students with regional industries after university graduation still differs substantially by institution. The selection is meaningful as a collection of operating approaches that may reduce that gap.

Grand-prize and best-practice universities

The published call plan explains the scope of cases universities could submit. Examples included job matching and internships with regional businesses, research institutions and public organizations for employment links, and living, cultural, language and administrative support and settlement support linked to visas for settlement support. Detailed program contents and performance indicators for each selected university were not confirmed in the public materials.

What international students should check

The selection list does not mean that employment is guaranteed for every major or every international student at those institutions. Applicants should ask the university international office whether their department is included in a participating program, what Korean-language, qualification and field-training requirements apply, and where they can receive advice on changing residence status after graduation. The order is to separately check a university's published case and the admissions and residence conditions that actually apply to an individual.

The next task of this call is to make the cases usable by other universities. When it becomes public which students were connected to which institutions through how many steps, rather than just one employment-rate figure, international students can compare institutions when choosing a school and universities can choose effective support systems.