NHRC Issues Recommendation to Hanbat University Chancellor to Revise Hiring Guidelines
The National Human Rights Commission (NHRC) found that Hanbat University guidelines on hiring full-time teaching staff violated articles 11 (right of equality) and 15 (liberty to choose one’s occupation) of the Korean Constitution and issued a recommendation to the chancellor of Hanbat University, a public school, to revise or delete portions of the guidelines. The recommendation follows a complaint petitioned in April 2003 against the Hanbat University chancellor by Hanbat University Professor Lim (58), charging that “in requiring only the active teaching staff to resign one month before applying for a full-time job teaching at the same university,” article 3: d of the hiring guidelines constitutes discrimination against existing non-permanent teaching staff.
The case arose when Hanbat University inserted article 3: d into their hiring guidelines on 2 April 2003. Seeing the difficulties faced by non-regular teaching staff who wanted to become regular, full-time staff as a result of this new clause, Professor Lim petitioned a complaint to the NHRC on April 16th.
Hanbat University responded that the clause was created for the following reasons. They were concerned that if they allowed active teaching staff to apply, that this might constitute discriminatory conduct against applicants from other universities. Second, they wanted the procedure for hiring full-time staff to be fair. Last, they wanted to preemptively eliminate any factors that might impede objectivity in the candidate selection process. Hanbat also responded that in keeping with the principle of autonomy for public universities, the power to appoint full-time teaching staff lay with the chancellor, and the new clause was created in response to the recommendation of the deans of colleges and department chairs. Additionally, the clause went through all procedural stages—including review by the personnel committee and the school affairs committee—before incorporation into the guidelines.
However, with regard to university autonomy, the intent behind the Public Educational Officials Act is to endow chancellors with authority and responsibility only within the scope allowing the most fairness and objectivity, and article 10: 2 (Principles of Appointment) of the Public Educational Officials Act stipulates that the principle behind appointment should be merit-based: “In appointing public educational officials, qualified candidates desiring appointment shall be given equal opportunities according to their abilities.” Accordingly, the NHRC found that article 3: d of the Hanbat University hiring guidelines did not provide equal opportunities according to candidates’ abilities in that the guidelines disadvantaged certain applicants (those from the same school,) and overstepped the boundaries of powers allowed to chancellors of public schools.
The NHRC also presented its opinion on ways to improve the full-time teaching staff appointment process. Instead of disadvantaging certain groups of applicants, the NHRC suggested that it would be more appropriate to draw up objective and fair standards for candidate review, including a comprehensive consideration of: how closely the candidate’s actual research corresponds to the field in which the candidate is applying for a position, how authoritative the journal in which the candidate’s research was published is, how much the candidate has contributed to his or her academic field, and the originality of the candidate’s analysis.
