2.14 Trillion Won Invested to Foster Talent Driving Regional Growth... Support for Local-Government, Corporate, and University Collaboration

Announcement of "Regional Growth Talent Development System" Plan
400 Billion Won in "Performance Evaluation Incentives" to Be Allocated
New 200 Billion Won Super-Regional Projects to Be Launched

The government will invest 2.14 trillion won this year to foster local talent that will drive balanced regional development. The program will be reorganized so that local students can feel the impact, and efforts to nurture talent on a super-regional scale, transcending boundaries between local governments, will be expanded.

Education Minister Choikyojin. Photo by Yonhap News

On April 2, the Ministry of Education announced a plan to implement the “Regional Growth Talent Development System (Anchor)” with a budget of 2.1403 trillion won this year. The Regional Growth Talent Development System is a framework in which 17 local governments support universities through customized projects linked to their own regional development strategies.

This initiative was launched last year under the name “Regional Innovation-centered University Support System (RISE).” However, this year, the name has been changed to “Anchor” to reflect the goal of balanced regional growth and to support talented individuals in staying within their local regions.

First, about 400 billion won of the total budget will be used as performance evaluation incentive funds. The government will assess the implementation process and outcomes of last year’s projects by local governments and allocate this year’s project budget accordingly.

In particular, the evaluation will focus on whether there was any “budget splitting” during the process of selecting and supporting universities by local governments; whether local governments and universities actively communicated and collaborated in carrying out the projects; and whether sufficient consideration was given to students and talent.

The evaluation results for the 17 local governments will be released to guarantee the right to know for local students and residents, and outstanding cases will be promoted to encourage wider adoption in other regions.

In addition, the government will expand industry-university cooperation programs that can lead to employment, such as contract-based departments and long-term internships. It will also support entrepreneurship education and the establishment of startup infrastructure so that promising ideas from local students can be commercialized.

The Ministry of Education will newly launch super-regional projects based on inter-governmental collaboration, with a budget of 200 billion won, in line with the government’s national balanced development strategy, “Five Axes, Three Special Zones (5-geuk 3-teuk).” Regional universities within the 5-geuk 3-teuk areas will cooperate to develop talent and conduct research, aiming to pool capabilities across the entire area. The government will also support regional, corporate, and university collaboration models to foster core talent for strategic industries.

Minister of Education Kyojin Choi said, “For the government’s ‘Five Axes, Three Special Zones’ development strategy—a key policy of our government based on people’s sovereignty—to succeed, it is essential to create an ecosystem in which young people across the country can find jobs and settle down in their own regions.”

He added, “Within the broader framework of the national balanced development policy, we will focus on producing results by fostering regional universities as innovation hubs and expanding the pool of local talent that will revitalize the regions.”

This content was produced with the assistance of AI translation services.