The KDI School of Public Policy and Management (hereafter "the School") provides a research environment that enables its faculty members to conduct research at a level commensurate with that of world-class universities.

Incentives & Non-Research Workloads

Contract Renewal

Contract renewal for our faculty members is directly linked to performance in academic research. In our experience, this incentive scheme has been a critical factor in motivating our faculty members to maintain high standards in the quantity and quality of their academic research.

With the exception of tenured professors, all KDI School faculty members are employed under a three-year contract, which can only be renewed when certain research requirements are met. There are many ways of meeting the minimum requirement for contract renewal. For example, one could publish two single-author articles in top-tier, internationally distributed journals within one’s three-year contract period.

Compensation

At the KDI School, compensation is also linked to research performance, so that exceptional researchers receive relatively higher pay. This compensation policy enables faculty members to dedicate more time to their research.

Teaching Loads

Faculty members at the KDI School are required to teach only four courses per year (each course consists of 45 hours). In the event that a faculty member teaches more than the four-course minimum, he/she is fully compensated for teaching the extra courses. This low teaching-load requirement enables our faculty members to devote more time to their academic research.

Research Support

The research support funding provided by the KDI School can be divided into two basic categories: Research Funding and Overseas Conference Trip Support.

Research Funding

The KDI School strives to provide sufficient research funding for its regular faculty members. There are two forms of funding: General Research & Teaching Expense funding (GRTE) and Research Project funding (RP).

Each year, the School deposits GRTE funds into the individual GRTE accounts of each regular faculty member. This can be applied toward general research and teaching expenses, including academic journal subscriptions fees, journal and conference submissions fees, academic association membership fees, purchasing books, case studies, databases, etc. All durable items purchased by faculty members from this account become the property of the School.

To secure RP funding, faculty members must make a specific research proposal and obtain approval from the Research Project Deliberation Committee. RP funds can be used to cover expenses related to hiring research assistants, conducting surveys, purchasing databases and software, and so on. Any faculty member who receives such RP funding must present the output of his/her research at the School’s Research Seminar upon termination of a research project and publish in an academic journal. Faculty members cannot receive funding for more than 3 research projects during the same period. All durable items purchased by faculty members from this account are the property of the School.

Overseas Conference Travel Support

The KDI School encourages its regular faculty members to participate in high-profile academic conferences. For top-tier international conferences, in cases where the faculty member is a paper presenter, the School provides full financial support for unlimited number of times.

Junior faculty members, during their first 3-year contract period, are fully supported once a year to attend a top-tier conference even if they are not presenting a paper.

Full financial support includes airfare, hotel accommodation, conference registration fees, and per diem expenses. Top-tier conferences include conferences organized by academic associations related to class A or B+ journals (roughly the top two thirds of the journals in the Journal Citation Report) or those organized by academic associations, not associated with any journal, but inarguably considered as top-tier.

Others

Because the KDI School is a sister institution to the Korea Development Institute (hereafter ‘KDI’), KDI School faculty members have free access to all publications and databases at KDI. In addition, the KDI School Library is equipped to provide all major journal articles on-line.