Have you ever heard about the “student autonomy major” program at Pusan National University (PNU)? The student autonomy major program has its merits by combining more than three majors, allowing students themselves to make a self-made major that is not established in PNU. According to article 51 of PNU regulation, undergraduate students must complete one of the following: double major, minor, major in connection, combined major, major in connection related to teaching, or student autonomy major. Like this, PNU regulations are encouraging students to complete a student autonomy major program. However, according to the information discovered by this reporter, from the 1st semester of 2020 to the 2nd semester of 2021, only one student tried to use this program, and he quit. According to its name, “student autonomy major,” it seems like it has high autonomy, and it even seems to have merit. Then why are students not trying to use this program? This article will analyze the problem of the student autonomy major program.

   First, lack of promotion could be a big problem. Searching “student autonomy major” on PNU’s official website, there are only 53 posts that were uploaded on each departments’ website and related institutions’ websites. It is not nearly enough comparing with other programs such as double major, which has 4,172 posts, and minor, which has 3,004 posts. Even considering that this program was started in 2020, the lack of promotion could still be criticized. When the student autonomy major program was first started, there were 18 posts for promotion. However, the number of promotion posts was continuously decreasing so that in the 2nd semester of 2021, only 13 posts were uploaded. An anonymous student from the College of Education said, “I am always trying to catch up with the new programs through my department’s website. However, I never heard about the student autonomy major program. I think PNU should increase the promotion and the accessibility of the student autonomy major program.” Unlike these situations, Sogang University is making a guidebook about the student autonomy major program for promotion. For these reasons, about 90 student autonomy tracks were made until 2019.

   Second, although the name of the program is student “autonomy” major, in particular, there is no autonomy for students. Students of the College of Humanities and some departments such as the department of sociology, are banned from registering in the student autonomy major program. Moreover, lectures of some departments such as the department of psychology are designated as a lecture that could not be involved in the student autonomy major program. According to this reporter’s information, asking the reason why those regulations are made, most of the persons in charge answered “We don’t know. It is just a meeting result.” Furthermore, even though the student autonomy major is recognized as a 2nd major, it must be related with the students’ first major. For instance, if a student of the department of Ethics Education wants to design an Articficial Intelligence (AI) major through the student autonomy major program, even though lectures from the Ethics Education might not be related to AI, they must design their AI major course including the lectures from Ethics Education, otherwise the major design could be rejected. Lastly, the uncooperative attitude from some departments are also invading the autonomy of students who want to design their own major. According to information obtained by this reporter, department A, which was not mentioned as an exception in the guidelines of the student autonomy major program, said, “We have too many students who are in their double major and minor, sowe could not receive students from students autonomy major program,” and finally rejected the application of a student.

   Finally, because of the two reasons mentioned above, there was also a problem of the lack of a system due to no students going through this program. The biggest problem arises when students are registering for classes. When reg-istering for courses, students are divided into four categories: first major/double major, minor, and extra/general electives/other universities. There was no category for student autonomy major. According to interviews, asking what category the student autonomy major is in, a person in charge answered, “There is no system yet, so I do not know.” An anonymous student from the College of Education said. “Including registering for lectures, there are lots of problems in the student autonomy major program. I think there is a need to strengthen related institutions so that students who will go through the student autonomy major program can ask questions more comfortably.” In contrast, Seoul National University has a website related to their student autonomy major to receive questions from students to prevent system defects quickly. For these reasons, there are about ten majors in a semester made by students.

   An anonymous staff member from PNU Educational Affairs said, “Despite its original purpose, it is true that students could not participate well due to a lack of promotion and systems. We will strengthen the promotions and take appropriate measures, so I hope that more students will be able to go through a student autonomy major program.”