High Price for Tenure

In regard to the faking of stem cell clones in South Korea, a news story from CNN.com talks about the power that Korean professors have over their undergraduates:

"Influential professors at prestigious schools "are allowed to build their own private kingdoms, promoting and demoting their underlings largely at will," said Tikhonov, a naturalized Korean of Russian origin also known as Pak Noja.

Listing professors as senior authors on papers even if they contributed little, fabricating receipts to cover up their personal use of research funds, and running errands for them are just a few of the headaches grad school students say they face.

"Most professors tend to think graduate students are their personal secretaries," said a doctoral degree candidate at Seoul's Hanyang University, requesting that his name and even his major not be revealed.

"It's hard to refuse requests in fear of retaliation," said the 34-year-old, who once had to go to his professor's house on a weekend to fix a computer.

Professors argue such misconduct is uncommon.

"I think it's just a small number of professors who make such absurd requests," said Cho Dong-jun, who teaches international relations at the University of Seoul. "If these were common practices, I, as a professor, would have easily known about them, but I've never seen such a case."

Cutthroat competition for a professorship sometimes involves large sums of money changing hands.

In the first eight months of last year, prosecutors penalized 61 professors and administrators, mostly for receiving bribes in exchange for granting tenure. In 2004, prosecutors punished 23 professors and officials on similar charges as well as misappropriation of funds.

In one case last year, a university chancellor received $4 million from 42 candidates in exchange for appointing them as professors, prosecutors said.

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