Plans to open branch campuses in South Korea of a number of prestigious Western schools are being viewed as “a bold experiment, one intended to bolster opportunity [in South Korea] and attract investment from abroad,” reports the New York Times. The Times notes that this development “is part of the global expansion of Westerns schools” whose branch campuses are catering to South Korean parents’ desire to provide their children with a global and English-language curriculum without having to send them abroad. According to the Times, the government-led effort to provide high quality English language education in Korea responds to both parents’ ambitions for their children and their concerns about the impact of overseas study on family stability and maintaining fluency in Korean.

Korea plans to open branch campuses of 12 prestigious Western schools by 2015. In the 940-acre government-financed Jeju Global Education City, English will be the only language used, and North London Collegiate broke ground on the first branch campus this month. In addition to Jeju Global Education City, individual campuses with Western-style schools will soon be opening in other places all over South Korea, one example being a branch campus of the Chadwick school of California in Songdo.

According to the Times article, the pressure to be proficient in the English language and eventually obtain a diploma from a high-ranking U.S. university is extremely high in South Korea, and interest in the newly evolving programs is strong.