Recently, the direct election system for president of university is got button issue. in the Past, Korea didn't have this system, in the late 1980's, with the wind of democracy this election system appeared. At first, it was considered the ideal democratic system. However, with time we found some unexpected side effects.
    One of the common problems is the enthusiastic election mood which leads to carelessness about professor's work like research and education. With this matter, inevitable formations of factions can bring about negative social effects. Also, there is more specific reason. Indiscriminate pledge not for development of university, but for only election makes the university goes into financial trouble. For these reasons, most of all private universities already abolished this institution and many national universities have also discarded or changed this election system.
    What do students think about this problem? Unfortunately, lots of students don't know about this issue. Even though some of them recognize this, they haven't considered it carefully. According to Mr. Lee who goes to the national university in Seoul, Checks and Balances, Decentralization, and Self-reliance are purification strategies. He mentioned that if the direct election system is abolished, certain functions could weaken. If there functions weaken, there would be more possibility to commit irregularity in the system; like indirect election system or appointing system. On the other hand, Mr. Kim in national university at Daejeon has different opinion. He claimed that due to the short period of service, it might be difficult for the president to carry out his policies within his term. That is, now that continuing election rend to have President make time-serving promises, it is nor likely to carry out his own policy. Also there is another view that Ms. Yoon in national university at Cheong-ju. She worried about strong authority of President in indirect and appointing electing system, saying need of check organization. Above this, I listened more student's opinion as well. They opposed removal of direct election system, because this system can make much of ideal value, democracy in common.
    However, in reality, we should not ignore practical problems, and need to solve several problems with in the current system. That's why alternative system (indirect or appointing elect) has occurred. However, any system cannot be perfect. I believe all system have both strong and weak point, and it is meaningless to replace one system perfectly. For instance, we know that there are some problems about indirect electing system like discussed before, but it has also positive functions. For these reasons, we have to supplement the negative points one by one within rhe current system instead of just adopting the alternative way which cannot be the correct answer.

By  Song Young-mok , Shophomore
Dept. of Veterinary Medicine