ENGINEERING BULLETIN

Major universities collected 20 percent more tuition than was due last year, according to a study Monday.

The finding was based on a study of 20 Seoul-based private universities by the Korea Higher Education Research Institute.

The schools inflated expenditure when drawing up their annual budgets, while reporting less than what was actually collected in revenue, as a means to impose higher tuition fees.

The 20 omitted a combined total of 571.6 billion won in revenue from their financial statements for 2011. However, they overstated a combined total of 172.1 billion won in expenditure.

Through the accounting manipulation, the universities collected 743.7 billion won more in tuition than was warranted, the institute noted. The sum accounted for 20 percent of the schools’ total tuition, estimated at 3.72 trillion won.

The colleges could have actually cut tuition by 20 percent if they had adopted appropriate accounting measures.

“The schools used a method of omitting a large amount of money collected and exaggerating costs to collect more tuition from students in a deceptive manner,” said Yeon Duk-won, researcher at the institute.

Source: University World News and The Korea Times