The purpose of this study is (1) to investigate issues and challenges in implementing the 19th presidential pledge of Moon’s Administration on higher education and (2) to suggest additional reform agendas. Based on the analysis, this study suggests that Moon’s administration should consider the following four reform agendas: (1) higher education governance reform to secure policy consistency regardless of regime changes and to overcome problems incurred by government’s policy monopoly; (2) total overhauling of exclusively government-led university evaluation system associated with government funding; (3) restructuring of so-called ‘higher cost – lower efficiency’ higher education system by realizing more flexible and inter-linked higher education system actively utilizing low cost higher education approaches such as cyber universities and technical colleges; and (4) Importance of vocational & technical education in the 4th industrial revolution era and strengthening of government policy intervention toward the technical college sector including making some unhealthy private colleges into public ones. Overall, to improve the quality of presidential pledge from the perspectives of the electorate, more active role of academic communities should be required during and after the presidential election process.