Education and job policies were crucial to ensure regional growth among the government’s balanced development policies. In 2019, the Ministry of Education created a framework for university financial support by integrating the existing government projects into the following four: the National University Development Project, University Innovation Support Project, Industry-University Cooperation Project (LINC+), and Research Support Project (BK21+).

The University Innovation Support Project is a financial support project that integrates the existing financial support (ACE+), specialization support (CK), humanities support (CORE), women’s engineering support (WE-UP), and industrial connection support (PRIME) projects. This project is divided into “autonomous improvement” and “capacity building” types. For three years from 2019, the government supported 143 universities, including 131 autonomous improvement universities and 12 capacity-building universities.

The Industry-University Cooperation Project (LINC+) is the government’s support for industrial-educational cooperation, consisting of nurturing “Industry-Leading Universities” for the win-win development of universities and local communities and “Society-Tailored Industry-Academic Cooperation Leading Universities” to foster human resources for regional development. The government has supported 55 industry-leading universities for five years from 2017 to 2021 and has carried out the Society-Tailored Industry-University Cooperation Project through agreements with 20 universities every year.

The Post-Education Leading University Project aims to foster lifelong vocational education institutions by operating an adult-friendly education system by establishing industry-university governance. The government selected 15 universities in 2019 and 10 in 2020.

The BK21 Project, the government’s representative project for nurturing academic human resources, successfully carried out the first phase (1999–2007), the second phase (2006–2012), and the third phase (2013–2020). Currently, the 4th phase (2021–2027) is in progress.