Gov't offers flexible option for next year's medical school admission quota

Home > National > Social Affairs

print dictionary print

Gov't offers flexible option for next year's medical school admission quota

Doctors walk near a hospital in Seoul on Thursday. [NEWS1]

Doctors walk near a hospital in Seoul on Thursday. [NEWS1]

 
The government moved to break the deadlock with doctors on Friday by accepting national medical schools’ request to flexibly adjust their admission quota for next year, but the medical community is not welcoming the government’s offer.
 

Related Article

 
Friday’s decision comes about two months after junior doctors nationwide left their jobs in protest of the government’s decision to increase medical school enrollment by 2,000 spots.
 
All 32 medical schools nationwide will be allowed to freely adjust their portion of the 2,000-spot quota by 50 to 100 percent in 2025. For example, a school allotted a required increase of 100 spots could opt to only increase by 50 for that year.
 
Prime Minister Han Duck-soo said Friday that the flexibility will only pertain to the 2025 academic year. The plan to hike admissions by 2,000 will strictly apply to the academic year of 2026 and onward.
 
The presidents of six national universities — Kangwon National University, Kyungpook National University, Gyeongsang National University, Jeju National University, Chungbuk National University and Chungnam National University — posed a request to the government the day before, asking for permission to halve the admission hike for the upcoming admissions.
 
According to Han, the request was accepted considering that the application period for universities is only a few months away, so as to alleviate concerns among students and parents.
 
With the government’s offer for a flexible quota hike next year, the enrollment number is expected to be around 1,500, if private universities continue with the full quota hike. If both public and private universities decide to take the flexible approach, it could go as low as 1,000.
 
All 32 universities are required to submit their plan for the next year’s admission quota by April 30. The schools also need to submit their plan for the 2026 academic year based on the full 2,000 quota hike by late this month.
 
During the press briefing on Friday, Health Minister Cho Kyoo-hong stressed that the government is not considering revisiting or postponing the plan by a year, as the essential medical field needs to be immediately filled and the application period for universities is approaching.
 
Deputy Prime Minister and Education Minister Lee Ju-ho added that they are still open to discussing the quota of 2,000 as long as the medical community presents a suitable alternative backed by "scientific reasoning."
 
Despite the government’s first "compromise" on the matter, many doctors are not welcoming the announcement.
 
Joo Su-ho, former head of the Korean Medical Association, criticized the government, saying that the plan was a bad decision based on wrong advice.
 
“Was lowering the quota by a few hundred the only alternative the government could bring up with the school presidents merely serving as puppets?” he wrote on Facebook. “The only exit [to this standoff] would be to completely rethink the plan.”
 
Medical professors echo this sentiment, asserting that the government's concession falls short of addressing the underlying issues.
 
“Junior doctors will never come back by just lowering the quota by a few hundred,” an ER doctor told the JoongAng Ilbo. The doctor said negotiation would be needed, not a unilateral announcement, particularly in the lingering medical crisis.
 
Over 90 percent of Korea’s 13,000 junior doctors have remained on strike, which began on Feb. 20 to protest the government’s plan to increase the medical school admissions quota by 2,000 from the current limit of 3,058, which has been frozen since its last reduction in 2006.
 
The walkout has caused chaos in the country’s medical system as junior doctors, who comprise 30 to 40 percent of the total number of doctors at the country’s top hospitals, assist senior doctors during surgeries and manage inpatients.

BY CHO JUNG-WOO [[email protected]]
Log in to Twitter or Facebook account to connect
with the Korea JoongAng Daily
help-image Social comment?
s
lock icon

To write comments, please log in to one of the accounts.

Standards Board Policy (0/250자)