Feature

By Byun Hee-jin
Reporter of Campus Section


Last April, the HUFS Alumni Association created the Federation of Overseas Alumi by linking overseas alumni all over the world and had its first general meeting for them to connect and discuss their continued interest in HUFS. Also, celebrating HUFS’ 62nd anniversary, it created the “Wall of Honor” on the first floor of the HUFS Seoul Campus Main Building, where names and faces of alumni who have donated for the university’s development are carved.

However, the Alumni Association bears a lot of hardships and has limitations. For HUFSans who will graduate and become one of the HUFS alumni in the future, The Argus looked into the hardships that the Alumni Association is going through and find appropriate solutions for them.


Current state of HUFS Alumni Association

As the name of our school is Hankuk University of “Foreign” Studies, there are many alumni who have spread not only in Korea but throughout the world. However, the association that connects alumni has a lot of hardships achieving its main role.
Cho Gyu-tae, the secretary general of the HUFS Alumni Association, said, “The current domestic and overseas Alumni Associations’ activities for networking between alumni are not organized well due to the lack of finances and systematization.”

At present, the Korean and overseas Alumni Association lack systematic organization since the network is weak. The Overseas Alumni Association is mostly organized by alumni who are playing important roles in each foreign society. However, those individuals are usually resident employees working temporarily in those countries. If the employees return to Korea, then the Alumni Association of that region would not be able to continue to network between alumni living in certain regions. Although key figures come back to Korea, the association members who still live in local areas should remain active in the alumni network. However, they have their personal business and activities, so it is impractical and difficult for them to continuously manage the association.

Since the network of the Alumni Association is not established well due to the lack of organization, its activity rate has become low. Therefore, HUFS may get low scores on the index of Korean universities’ growth done by Ministry of Education because not only is the sense of fellowship weakened but also support for school development is lowered.

Gwon Soon-han, a president of the HUFS Alumni Association, said, “The amount of the university’s development fund is being evaluated by the government, and it may be an area of competition among Korean universities. However, HUFS is poor at networking compared to other universities in Korea.”

The HUFS Alumni Association holds various events to increase fellowship among alumni. Also, with the funds of the scholarship foundation of the Alumni Association, it gives scholarship to current HUFS students and donates toward the school’s development. Likewise, the Alumni Association gives financial support for enhancing education and HUFS’ development. However, as previously mentioned, it is hard to prepare funds and hold all sorts of events since the association is not organized well.



Hardships of the Alumni Association

Low interest of alumni

The overall interest of alumni toward the Alumni Association is very low. The HUFS Alumni Association elects its executives by appointing Alumni who can actively work as a member of the association. Currently, there are 16 executives. However, it is hard to find alumni who can dedicate themselves fully to the Alumni Association’s work. In addition, it holds events such as “Alumni’s Night” or a “New Year’s Party” every year planned for 600 people, but the number of alumni who actually come to the events is 300, which is only half of the planned number.

The alumni’s low participation is directly related to the finance shortage. The Alumni Association is a nonprofit organization, or a service group. It manages its business through donations and membership fees, which are 30,000 won a year. However, there are not so many alumni who pay the fee, so the amount it collects is always quite low. If HUFS’ 120,000 alumni all paid the fee, then the association would be able to manage itself very well, but the number of alumni paying has lowered compared to the previous year. The fees collected this year were about 50 million won. With this amount, it is hard to run the organization, so the situation is pretty poor.

In the past, the Alumni Association fees had been collected from the freshmen as well, but now the Ministry of Education has banned it. Also, it was mandatory for graduates to pay the Alumni Association fee in the past, but it became optional five years ago. Thus, expanding finance has become difficult, and activities for alumni had to be lowered.

According to the 2015 Korean universities’ donation report, HUFS is charting the lowest of the top 10 universities in Seoul. While donations for HUFS are about 4 billion won, those for Seoul National University, Yonsei University, Korea University, and Sungkyunkwan University are over 30 billion won. The enormous amount of donations for these four universities is due to the bigger number of alumni compared to HUFS’ and their alumni’s continuous interest toward their alma mater. In Sungkyunkwan and Chung-Ang University’s case, the power of support from their own enterprises is quite strong.

Problems caused by shortage of funds

One of the problems caused by a lack of finances is university’s development. It supports scholarships for 10 students each semester and raises fund for the development and welfare of its alma mater. However, if it has low funds, then students cannot enjoy these kinds of benefits. It matters when preparing for the Alumni Association events, too. Several events hosted by the association such as the general meeting and “Honorable HUFSan Reward” help to strengthen fellowship between HUFS juniors and seniors and further school develop in the long term.

However, it is hard to accomplish much with limited funds. In addition, to operate an organization, a great labor force is needed to do office work, promotions, and financial management. Unfortunately, the HUFS Alumni Association cannot hire additional manpower apart from its current executives due to lack of finances. The shortage of the labor force leads to insufficient promotions.

Lack of promotions

The HUFS Alumni Association promotes their events and what kind of businesses they do in order to let alumni know. It sends approximately 850 HUFS newsletters by e-mail and 12,000 Alumni journals by mail. However, it is still a small number considering HUFS total alumni is 120,000.

To promote to the 120,000 alumni, the association needs a list of graduates, but it only has 12,000 of them, which is merely 10 percent. Also, when contact information such as one’s address is changed, then the promotions are delivered back to the office, so the database should be updated. Overall, they are in a difficult situation to promote properly. The contact lists of the graduates in each college and division, so it is possible to collect all the lists. In order to do this, manpower is needed. However, the promotions committee of the Alumni Association does not have a suitable number of members, so it is hard for them to work on updating the data.


Outlook

For the Alumni Association to develop more, a lot of HUFSans’ interests toward their alma mater is needed. Once the network for the university’s development has been created, plenty of activities between HUFSans will be formed such as opportunities for the seniors to mentor their juniors and sharing foreign country’s information. We can reap the benefits that only HUFSans can gain through connecting HUFS graduates. This kind of network does not require a huge amount of money; it is possible when pride of being alumni has been instilled.

Cho Gyu-tae, the secretary general of the HUFS Alumni Association, said, “We should build up alumni and current students’ alumni pride. If the Alumni Association’s businesses are activated through various activities such as the Federation of Overseas Alumni or the general meeting, then the domestic and overseas networks would also be activated.” He wishes for alumni to increase their pride in HUFS by directly and indirectly participating in the Alumni Association’s events and keeping abreast of HUFS news.

Current HUFS students would feel a sense of belonging to the association if they got a scholarship from the Alumni Association, being thankful to their alumni. HUFS alumni would be able to feel the pride of their alma mater by joining in Alumni club activities such as hiking.


At present, HUFS Alumni Association is in a situation where it needs a lot of HUFSans’ participation and interest. Once the association becomes active, special opportunities for HUFSans to help each other will be created. Also, if HUFS develops as the spirit of unity increases, it will raise not only HUFS’ but HUFSans’ social status.

 

저작권자 © The Argus 무단전재 및 재배포 금지