Tag: Fulbright

  • Fulbright at 75, Reform at 30: recasting US-Korea educational exchange

    Fulbright at 75, Reform at 30: recasting US-Korea educational exchange

    This year marks the 75th anniversary of the Fulbright Program in Korea, one of the oldest and most robust binational educational exchanges in the world.

    Coinciding with this milestone is the 30th anniversary of South Korea’s landmark 5.31 Education Reform – a policy blueprint that sought to transform the nation’s education system into a more open and globally competitive ecosystem.

    The Fulbright legacy in Korea illustrates how long-term bilateral cooperation has scaffolded national education strategies and fostered intellectual diplomacy across generations.

    The strategic alliance between the Republic of Korea and the United States has been underpinned by an enduring educational partnership. Education has always been more than a soft-power tool in this relationship; it has served as a central pillar for shared values, talent development, policy learning, and institutional co-evolution.

    At a time when the Indo-Pacific region is undergoing profound geopolitical, technological, and demographic shifts, reaffirming the educational ties between Korea and the US is a strategic imperative.

    Fulbright Korea: peacebuilding through knowledge

    Established through a 1950 agreement, Korea became one of the first countries to join the Fulbright Program, though the Korean War delayed its launch until 1960. Revised agreements in 1963 and 1972 created the Korean-American Educational Commission (KAEC) and introduced joint funding, making Korea one of 49 nations to co-finance the programme with the US.

    Since then, Korea has often matched or exceeded US contributions. Today, KAEC awards over 200 grants annually to Korean and American participants, supporting a global network of Fulbright scholars and more than 7,600 Korean alumni across diverse fields.

    Fulbright Korea exemplifies educational diplomacy at its best. Graduate fellowships support future policymakers and scientists, while English teaching assistants serve across Korea’s provinces, enhancing not just language acquisition but also cross-cultural understanding.

    These initiatives echo the lifelong learning ambitions embedded in Korea’s broader educational reforms, showing how international exchange and domestic innovation can reinforce each other. These long-standing programs have strengthened Korea’s education system while fostering mutual understanding, helping to build enduring people-to-people ties that support bilateral cooperation.

    Fulbright Korea exemplifies educational diplomacy at its best

    The US also supports student mobility and academic advising in Korea through EducationUSA, housed at KAEC, which offers Korean students up-to-date information on American higher education. Korea continues to rank among the top sending countries of international students to the US, with over 43,000 enrolled in 2023/24, making it the third-largest sender.

    While the Ministry of Education’s 2024 data reports 3,179 American students enrolled in Korean higher education, US study abroad figures suggest that nearly twice as many participate in programmes based in Korea. The US has also been recognised as a key partner in Korea’s Study Korea 300K Project, which seeks to host 300,000 international students by 2027.

    Institutional transformation and globalisation

    The 5.31 Education Reform, declared in 1995 amidst the waves of globalisation, aimed to modernise Korea’s education system through two core principles: globalisation and informatisation.

    These pillars reshaped how universities operate, allowing for greater curricular flexibility, the introduction of credit banking and recognition of prior learning, and the rapid adoption of digital tools. Competitive government initiatives like Brain Korea 21 and, later, the University Restructuring Plan incentivised research output and global benchmarking.

    Despite uneven implementation, the reform not only accelerated the internationalisation of Korean higher education but also deepened its ties with US institutions. By 2008/09, over 75,000 Korean students were enrolled in US higher education, placing Korea among the top sending countries globally.

    Given its relatively small population, this figure represented the highest per capita rate of US-bound students in the world. At the same time, Korea became an increasingly attractive destination for American students, with study abroad numbers growing substantially over the past two decades, growing from 2,062 in 2008/09 to 5,909 in 2022/23.

    Even before the 5.31 reform, US higher education institutions played a pivotal role. In the decades following the Korean War, American graduate programs served as critical training grounds for a generation of Korean scholars. These individuals returned not as passive recipients or brokers of foreign models but as active knowledge creators who adapted global ideas to local contexts, built research infrastructure, and mentored emerging academics.

    This process of intellectual circulation laid the groundwork for Korea’s ascent in global university rankings and research productivity. Foundational initiatives such as the Minnesota Project and the US-supported establishment of KAIST in 1971 were emblematic of this transformation.

    Transnational education and role of program providers

    Transnational education has added new depth to Korea-US educational co-operation. The Incheon Global Campus, which hosts the Korean branches of five US universities, enables local students to earn US degrees without leaving the country.

    These institutions bring American accreditation standards and pedagogical approaches into the Korean context, serving as important centres for cross-cultural learning and academic collaboration. Increasingly, they also function as supportive platforms for study abroad, facilitating intercultural engagement. Modest but meaningful forms of faculty and scholarly exchange further enrich these settings.

    Not-for-profit organisations such as IES Abroad have also become indispensable facilitators of educational exchange. Marking its 75th anniversary in 2025 as well, IES Abroad shares a parallel legacy with Fulbright Korea in advancing international education.

    Its recently established Seoul Center has already hosted over 220 US students, exemplifying the growing role of study abroad programme providers in fostering engagement with Korean society. By offering for-credit academic programmes, cultural and language immersion, and hands-on learning opportunities, these providers play a crucial role in sustaining the depth and accessibility of bilateral educational exchange.

    Toward mutuality and innovation

    Together, these developments have yielded significant accomplishments: a thriving academic pipeline, robust knowledge circulation, improved global rankings for Korean institutions, and a steady increase in intercultural literacy among students from both countries. Korean graduates with US degrees now occupy leadership roles in government, academia, and business. American students return with deeper cultural understanding, with many pursuing careers in diplomacy, education, or East Asia-focused industries.

    However, challenges remain. Some observers have raised concerns about the asymmetrical flow of talent, particularly during earlier decades when “brain drain” seemed more plausible than circulation.

    Others caution against over-Americanisation in curricula and institutional culture. Korea’s demographic decline and the rising cost of US education now pose additional obstacles to sustained exchange. National policy shifts, ideological realignments, and increasing public scrutiny of foreign involvement in higher education further complicate the outlook.

    Reimagining educational diplomacy

    The pressing challenges highlight the importance of rearticulating a shared vision for the future, particularly as the direction of bilateral commitments established under previous administrations continues to evolve.

    Mutual investment in scholarship funds, stronger collaboration among diverse stakeholders within the broader international education field, more accessible hybrid learning models, and enhanced joint governance of transnational campuses can all help to future-proof the Korea-US educational partnership.

    In 2025, as we commemorate 75 years of Fulbright Korea and IES Abroad, and reflect on 30 years since Korea’s 5.31 reform, it becomes evident that international exchange and domestic transformation are not separate trajectories but mutually reinforcing forces. Korea-US educational cooperation has evolved from aid-driven assistance to a platform for peer-to-peer growth and innovation.

    If approached strategically, the next chapter of this relationship can not only address pressing policy challenges but also reimagine the purpose of education in a world increasingly defined by brittleness, anxiety, nonlinearity, and incomprehensibility.

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  • Fulbright Board Resigns En Masse Over Political Interference

    Fulbright Board Resigns En Masse Over Political Interference

    Secretary Rubio directed officials to intervene in the final stage of the Fulbright selection process.

    John McDonnell/Getty Images

    All 12 members of the Fulbright Foreign Scholarship Board have resigned over what they say is political interference in the selection process for recipients of the prestigious international grant, according to sources familiar with the program and a letter announcing their resignation Wednesday morning.

    The FFSB normally has final say in the selection process, after initial application reviews by the Institute for International Education and host countries’ Fulbright commissions. This year was different. Inside Higher Ed broke the story last month that Secretary of State Marco Rubio directed State Department officials to intervene in the final stages of the selection process, adding a new step to cull proposals they felt did not comply with President Trump’s anti-DEI executive orders.

    In their letter, posted to Substack on Wednesday, the former board members wrote that the State Department’s “unprecedented” intervention in the selection process was illegal and unethical and compromised national diplomatic and research interests.

    “Under Democratic and Republican administrations alike, the Board has followed the law, operating with independence pursuant to its statutory mandate,” they wrote. “The current administration has usurped the authority of the Board and denied Fulbright awards to a substantial number of individuals who were selected.”

    Sources familiar with the program, who spoke with Inside Higher Ed on background to avoid retaliation, said that State Department officials—led by Darren Beattie, under secretary for diplomacy and public affairs—ultimately rejected more than 20 percent of the FFSB’s selected finalists in a last-minute intervention. Of the approximately 900 approved applicants for the U.S. Visiting Scholars program, for example, Beattie vetoed roughly 200.

    Many of the proposals that were cut focused on the effects of climate change or gender disparities; others seemed to have been denied based on their inclusion of words that triggered an anti-DEI keyword search that State Department officials used to conduct their final review, according to sources inside the selection process who shared details with Inside Higher Ed in May.

    A person familiar with the program said the board members were stonewalled by high-level State Department officials throughout the process. When they learned that many of their selected finalists hadn’t received their acceptance letters by late May—more than a month later than anticipated—they wrote multiple letters to department officials asking for an explanation. None came; in fact, the person familiar with the program said the members only learned about the new step in the selection process from rumored communications between foreign Fulbright commissions and outside media reports.

    Eventually, the person familiar with the FFSB said, the board members felt they had no choice but to resign.

    The source also said that 1,200 applications from foreign faculty and researchers to the Fulbright Foreign Scholars program—all of which were reviewed and accepted by the FFSB—were still “sitting on Beattie’s desk,” and that he seemed poised to feed them through the same content filters he used on Americans’ applications.

    A senior State Department official confirmed the board members’ resignations in an email to Inside Higher Ed, calling the move “nothing but a political stunt.” The spokesperson also said that the statute in the “Fulbright Hayes Act [sic]” does not give the FFSB “exclusive and final say” in the selection process, as the members argue.

    “The 12 members of the Fulbright Board were partisan political appointees of the Biden Administration,” the official wrote. “It’s ridiculous to believe that these members would continue to have final say over the application process, especially when it comes to determining academic suitability and alignment with President Trump’s Executive Orders.”

    The FFSB is a politically appointed board; the members who just resigned were indeed all appointed by President Biden. They include some big names in Democratic Party politics, such as Jen O’Malley Dillon, former White House deputy chief of staff and chair of the Harris-Walz campaign; Mala Adiga, Biden’s former deputy assistant; and Louisa Terrell, former White House director of legislative affairs. Others are business leaders and philanthropists.

    Their resignations now open up all 12 seats, which are usually term-limited, to Trump appointees. One person familiar with the Fulbright program said the board members had factored this into their decision to resign. But after being shut out from the end of the selection process, the board members felt they had to leave.

    “To continue to serve after the Administration has consistently ignored the Board’s request that they follow the law would risk legitimizing actions we believe are unlawful and damage the integrity of this storied program and America’s credibility abroad,” the members wrote in their letter.

    President Trump’s proposed fiscal year 2026 budget eliminates nearly all Fulbright funding and would gut the Bureau of Educational and Cultural Affairs, which houses the scholarship. The person familiar with the program said they believe the Trump administration is narrowing the funnel for Fulbright recipients and upending the selection process in order to undermine the program without eliminating it entirely, which only Congress can do.

    If the administration continues unwinding the program, they said, they worry that the recently selected cohort will be left stranded without funding or resources once the new budget takes effect.

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  • Proposed Budget Cuts Could End Fulbright Program

    Proposed Budget Cuts Could End Fulbright Program

    The Trump administration is looking to cut the State Department’s budget by almost half, and educational and cultural exchange programs, like the Fulbright scholarship, could be fully eliminated as a result, The Washington Post reported Monday.

    An internal memo, obtained by the Post, suggested that the department may only have $28.4 billion to spend next fiscal year to cover all of its staffing and operations and to share with the U.S. Agency for International Development, an independent agency that Trump has already tried to eliminate. That’s $27 billion, or 48 percent, less funding than the two groups received in fiscal year 2025.

    The proposed budget cuts would terminate the Fulbright scholarship, a highly selective cultural exchange program established by Congress in 1946, along with the State Department’s other educational and cultural programs. The president has yet to propose his budget for fiscal year 2026 to Congress, though he’s expected to do so later this month, the Post reported. Congress, by law, has the final say about which programs get funding.

    Fulbright funding and operations have already been in flux during the early days of the Trump administration as some participants have struggled to obtain their visas for next academic year and others are waiting on stipend funds that had been promised to get them through the current term, Inside Higher Ed has reported.

    The State Department did not respond to the Post’s request for comment.

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