주요 법안의 비교를 통한 국립대학법의 쟁점과 과제

The main purpose of this Article is to examine the essential provisions of the five major bills on the National University Act, and to spread consensus within the university community and present persuasive logics on the need for its enactment. The Act stipulates the social responsibility of national universities and the government's public responsibility for the support of national universities, and aims to strengthen the publicity of higher education and contribute to balanced national development and improvement of university competitiveness. While prescribing basic matters such as university autonomy, the education system, finance, and the status and role of members, democratic control is strengthened by implementing the principle of legal reservation under the Constitution. As a special law on the establishment and operation of national universities, the Act adopts a conservative approach to maintain the provisions of related laws as much as possible. This characteristic stands out with regard to democratic governance. On the other hand, the National University Act sought to guarantee the autonomy of financial management, which is an essential element of university autonomy, by stipulating the expansion of block grants in order to solve the problems of project-based funding. The Act’s enactment can provide an important opportunity for the enactment of the Private University Act and the Higher Education Finance Grant Act. In particular, the Act will be a meaningful starting point for change of the paradigm of the existing university policy based on the command-and-control approach. The Article presents six main arguments for the legitimacy of the Act’s enactment: i) Expansion of financial aid to universities is an inevitable option; ii) Fostering national universities is to foster regional universities, which becomes the basis of balanced national development and, at the same time, leads to the relaxation of the university ranking system; iii) The Act can become a legislative model for the Private University Act. In addition, the enactment of the Private University Act will be a major premise to justify the expansion of financial support for private universities; (iv) The central status of professors must be guaranteed. There is a big gap between the ideal of egalitarianism and the reality of universities. This is because the faculty group is the only existence who can check the president's self-righteousness and power abuse. If the participatory right of employees and students is further expanded, the harm of the presidential election system will increase, and the development of universities will be compromised. It is desirable for politicians to leave it to the autonomy of each university rather than to intervene in the governance of universities by revising related statutes; (v) The existing university policy based on command-and-control are not sustainable, and it is desirable to guarantee maximum university autonomy by implementing the policy based on the philosophy of 'support but not interfere' along with expanding financial support at the average level of OECD countries; and (vi) The Act will serve as a supplement without colliding with the ten Seoul National Universities creation policy in that it will be a priming water for the policy’s success.