‘지방대학 혁신역량 강화사업’ 혹은 ‘NURI (New University for Regional Innovation) 사업’은 지역발전혁신전략의 한 주체로 설정된 지방대학의 발전을 도모하는 사업이다. NURI사업은 학부 졸업생 수준의 중견전문인력을 양성하는 지방대학의 기능을 강화하고자 하는 목적으로 시행되었다. 본 논문은 졸업생 취업률의 변화를 중심으로 노동시장에서 나타난 NURI사업의 성과를 평가하고자 한다. 이를 위해 우리는 한국교육개발원의 졸업생 취업률 통계조사 자료를 활용하여 NURI사업단과 NURI사업에 지원하였으나 미선정된 사업단의 취업률을 비교하였다. 이를 바탕으로 NURI사업이 시행된 이후 취업률의 개선이 나타났는지를 이중차감법을 이용하여 검증하였다. 검증 결과, NURI사업단의 취업률은 미선정 사업단에 비해 빠르게 상승하였으며, 기간이 지남에 따라 취업률 개선 정도의 차이가 더욱 크게 나타났다. 그러나 이러한 차이는 통계적으로 유의한 수준은 아니므로 취업률 개선효과를 단정할 수 없다. 더구나 취업률의 변화를 관찰한 기간이 충분히 길지 않다는 점에서 NURI사업의 효과성을 단정적으로 평가하기는 더욱 어렵다. 또한 어느 정도의 취업률 개선이 이루어졌다 하더라도 투입된 예산규모가 상당히 크다는 점 등을 고려할 때 NURI사업이 기대한 만큼의 성과를 거두고 있다고 단언하기는 어렵다. 따라서 차후에도 지속적인 검증이 필요할 것이다.

‘New Universities for Regional Innovation(NURI)’ is a financial aid program designed to promote the development of universities as a major component of Regional Innovation System (RIS). In particular, this program emphasizes the role of regional universities to provide the qualified graduates for the regional economy. This paper is to evaluate the effect of NURI, focusing on the change of graduates’ employment. The effect of the program can be evaluated by the quality of graduates’ accumulated human capital, and graduates’ employment performance represents the graduates’ quality evaluated in the labor market. This is also believed to be a good performance indicator of the NURI program. We utilize the graduate employment survey of Korean Educational Development Institute (KEDI), and calculate the graduates’ employment rates of the departments that received the financial support of NURI (treatment group). We also calculate the graduates’ employment rates of the departments that applied for the support of the NURI program but were not selected (comparison group). By using difference-in-differences method, we compare the change of graduates’ employment rates in treatment and comparison groups before and after the program came in effect. Compared with the employment rates in 2004 before the NURI program started, the graduates employment rates improved in both groups in 2005 and 2006. The improvement of the employment rates in the treatment group is larger than that in the comparison group. Moreover, the difference of improvement gets larger in the year 2006 than in 2005, which means those students who were affected more years by the NURI program are more likely to be employed. However, the difference is not statistically significant, and we cannot definetely conclude that NURI showed the desired effect on the quality of the college graduates. We calculate employment rates in two ways; whether to treat going on to graduate education as an employment or not. The result was qualitatively the same in both cases. We also tracked quality of employment by investigating the firm size where the graduates of the treatment group were employed. By utilizing data from the Employment Insurance Fund, we measure the firm size by the number of employees. We did not find any deterioration of employment quality between 2005 and 2006, though it deteriorates in 2007. Therefore, the improvement of employment rates until 2006, though not statistically significant, does not seem to come at the cost of employment quality. The interpretation of this result cannot help being very limited. First, this evaluation covers such a short time period. It only covers two years after the program started, 2005 and 2006. Second, the extent of the improvement in employment rates is not satisfactory considering the amount of financial support, even though it can be argued that the employment has improved since the inception of the program. Subsequent evaluation of the program is required to certify the NURI programs’ longer term effectiveness.

‘New Universities for Regional Innovation(NURI)’ is a financial aid program designed to promote the development of universities as a major component of Regional Innovation System (RIS). In particular, this program emphasizes the role of regional universities to provide the qualified graduates for the regional economy. This paper is to evaluate the effect of NURI, focusing on the change of graduates’ employment. The effect of the program can be evaluated by the quality of graduates’ accumulated human capital, and graduates’ employment performance represents the graduates’ quality evaluated in the labor market. This is also believed to be a good performance indicator of the NURI program. We utilize the graduate employment survey of Korean Educational Development Institute (KEDI), and calculate the graduates’ employment rates of the departments that received the financial support of NURI (treatment group). We also calculate the graduates’ employment rates of the departments that applied for the support of the NURI program but were not selected (comparison group). By using difference-in-differences method, we compare the change of graduates’ employment rates in treatment and comparison groups before and after the program came in effect. Compared with the employment rates in 2004 before the NURI program started, the graduates employment rates improved in both groups in 2005 and 2006. The improvement of the employment rates in the treatment group is larger than that in the comparison group. Moreover, the difference of improvement gets larger in the year 2006 than in 2005, which means those students who were affected more years by the NURI program are more likely to be employed. However, the difference is not statistically significant, and we cannot definetely conclude that NURI showed the desired effect on the quality of the college graduates. We calculate employment rates in two ways; whether to treat going on to graduate education as an employment or not. The result was qualitatively the same in both cases. We also tracked quality of employment by investigating the firm size where the graduates of the treatment group were employed. By utilizing data from the Employment Insurance Fund, we measure the firm size by the number of employees. We did not find any deterioration of employment quality between 2005 and 2006, though it deteriorates in 2007. Therefore, the improvement of employment rates until 2006, though not statistically significant, does not seem to come at the cost of employment quality. The interpretation of this result cannot help being very limited. First, this evaluation covers such a short time period. It only covers two years after the program started, 2005 and 2006. Second, the extent of the improvement in employment rates is not satisfactory considering the amount of financial support, even though it can be argued that the employment has improved since the inception of the program. Subsequent evaluation of the program is required to certify the NURI programs’ longer term effectiveness.

NURI, Regional Universities, Graduate Employment Rate