Rumors around PNU admission were spread over the local media.
Title: "The national universities that were supposed to be destroyed in the order of cherry blossoms have collapsed at the same time"
Subtitles: Unreached final additional recruitment of 28th / Neglecting despite the scholarship / Not registered with national universities such as PNU
Rumors about Pusan National University (PNU) are causing controversy. The article that was brought up stated, “There is a shortage of applicants in various departments,” and it is a total rumor article. That article was spread over communities, then developed anxiety among PNU students.
Recently, some of the media reported articles about PNU being “under capacity… Collapse of the main regional national university”. The article said that in most of the popular departments of PNU, such as the dept. of Economics, there was a shortage of new applicants. the article was mostly based on the Korean Council for University Education. The article included that PNU had to additionally recruit new students due to a lack of applicants and added that it had already predicted this situation.
However, Channel PNU found out that the article IS NOT TRUE AT ALL. According to PNU admissions, on the regular application for 2022, the maximum number of students to be admitted was 1,562, and 8,353 applied. Therefore, PNU recorded a competition rate of 5.35:1. Unlike the information of the rumor, the rate was very intense.
The percentage of registration of successful applicants increased too. In 2021, the ratio was 98.4%, but this year reached 99.6%, 1.2% higher than last year. Commonly, it is considered unsatisfactory in educational circles when the competition ratio is less than 3:1. The department of Economics mentioned in the controversial article, the article that the competition rate was 4.97:1.
In the case of regular application, it is common to prepare for additional recruitment even if there are many prospective applicants already. Because even though 100% of students are filled by the end of the deadline, there may be some students who drop out at the last minute. This is “unfilled” not “fail to reach”, and universities of capital areas also conduct additional recruitment in the same way as PNU.
Due to the reckless writing of articles, PNU students complain of anxiety. Many PNU students entered after studying very hard. However, they can’t hide their disappointment about the “failed to reach” application. Though PNU has not responded to all the misinformation that brings controversy, Im Young-Ho (Prof. of Media & Communication, PNU) said, “It is a problem for the media to reinforce existing beliefs through reporting rather than correcting them.”
Reporter Hong Yun-Woo
Translated by Yun Chae-Eun