To impose an age limitation on applicants for professors is a violation of their rights to equality (11-22-2002)
The National Human Rights Commission concluded that imposing age limits on professor applicants infringes on their rights to equality, after examining the conditions for recruiting professors at 14 universities in 2002.
The NHRC also recommended that the presidents of 8 universities delete the age limits provisions in their regulations as soon as possible. Eight universities stipulated the age limits as the absolute conditions like "those who are over the age of 00 cannot apply."
Moreover, the NHRC recommended to 14 presidents of national universities not to discriminate against age when they hire professors.
The NHRC had examined 46 universities across the country by virtue of its authority since July 2002, after determining that age limits can infringe on the right to equality, which is guaranteed by Article 11 of the Constitution of Korea. According to the result of examination, the number of university was 44 universities which had recruited for professors in 2002. 14 of 44 universities were found to put an age limit in their advertisement.
This recommendation of the NHRC came after examining several documents involved and statutes which were submitted by universities and discussed with the Ministry of Education and Human Resources Development and relevant experts.
In the process of examination by the NHRC, the national universities suggested the reasons to limit the age of applicants for professors as follows; to offer good quality of education and to improve the ability of researcher; to harmonize with the existing professors; to hire professors of diverse ages; to apply to the Education Official Appointment Regulations. However, the NHRC mentioned that these reasons could not justify the age limitation for recruiting professors.
The NHRC also rejected the contention that imposing the age limitation is the autonomous right of each university, protesting that these regulations infringed on paragraph 2 of Article 30 under the National Human Rights Commission Act as well as Article 11 of the Constitution of Korea. In addition, the NHRC mentioned that there was no reasonable relationship between abilities of professors and their ages.
