In 2012, the Korean government drastically increased the budget for scholarships to reduce the burden of university tuition by establishing the 2012 National Scholarship Program. The government budget for scholarships increased from KRW 641.2 billion in 2011 to KRW 2.0036 trillion in 2012, and KRW 3.0986 trillion in 2013.
   
    While the increased budget for university tuition subsidies resulted in decreased burdens for the payers, there were also issues regarding the management of the program. These included inappropriate standards for qualification, such as school grades and household income brackets, and the issue of fairness among the beneficiaries. Moreover, there are voices of concern that the expanded budget for subsidies may delay the restructuring of poorly managed universities. Thus, the report performed an assessment on the university tuition subsidy program, focusing on the National Scholarship Program, to identify the issues and share ideas for their improvement. 
   
    The assessment results showed that the National Scholarship Program had low consistency and predictability since it lacked medium- to long-term plans on the supply and demand standards and budget sizes. Moreover, the calculation of the household income bracket was not precise in measuring actual income since financial assets and debts were not considered. The Type One National Scholarship, which provided differentiated fixed amount subsidies to students by income bracket up to the 80th percentile income group, was based on a high cost - low efficiency structure due to its inadequate criteria for recipients and amounts of the subsidies. Type Two National Scholarships, paid by each school according to its efforts to cut down on tuition, had issues in the sustainability of the distribution standards.
   
    At the same time, the analysis of the student loan programs, another pillar of the university tuition subsidy program, showed that the general student loan program lacked action plans on the prevention of credit defaults. In addition, the Deun-Deun student loan, a student loan to be repaid after employment, had issues regarding its loan restrictions by income brackets and a lack of support for the underprivileged.
   
    In the future, the Korean government needs to implement new ideas on improving the efficiency and effectiveness of its tuition subsidy policy by appropriately utilizing the scholarship and the student loan programs by applicable recipients and by differentiating the qualifications for the national scholarships. Moreover, before expanding the subsidy programs for university tuition, such as by increasing the National Scholarships, the government should enforce strict restructuring on poorly performing schools and strive for a more efficient use of budgets for subsidies by building an integrated database with related scholarship institutions to prevent overlapping scholarship subsidies.