8 Dental and Medical Colleges to Become Specialized Graduate Schools

8 dental and medical colleges will fully convert into specialized graduate schools or will be managed by existing medical colleges from 2003.

Also, these medical and dental colleges will not select students for two years unless and until they select students for specialized graduate schools for the 2005 year. Therefore, entering medical related fields in the universities is becoming difficult.

After receiving the report of the plan regarding induction of medical-dental specialized graduate schools in 2003 from universities on the 14th, the Ministry of Education and Human Resource announced that Gachon Medical School (40 per batch) and Konkuk Medical School (40 per batch) among 41 medical universities will fully induct specialized graduate schools, and Kyoung Hee University (120 per batch) will run the medical college and specialized graduate schools simultaneously.

Kyoung Hee university plans to reduce the number of students in specialized graduate schools under 60 following the Education Ministry`s advice of inducting students 50 percent above than the existing fixed number for the medical college.

And, 5 universities such as Seoul National University (97), Kyoungpook National University (60), Chonnam National University (70), Chonbuk National University (40) and Kyoung Hee university (80) among 11 dental universities will not select new students for the 2003 year but will fully turn into specialized dental and medical graduate schools.

Consequently, there will be severe competition for entrance into medical and dental colleges as 347 students (45.8 percent) will be taken out from the fixed number of 757 students for 11 dental colleges and more than 140 students (4.3 percent) from 3,253 students of 41 medical colleges.

The Seoul National University dental school confirmed that it will fully convert the school into specialized graduate school, and suggested this to the university headquarters. It decided not to change the medical college. The university will reach the final decision at the president`s meeting on the 21st.

The Ministry of Education will support more than 1 billion won as expansion expenditure for infrastructure to universities who will implement specialized graduate schools and will allocate more than 500 million won as development expenditure for the Medical Education Entrance Test (MEET) administered by universities.

On the other hand, the Ministry of Education expressed that colleges which will turn into specialized graduate schools in 2004-05 year should submit its plan report by April 20th.

inchul@donga.com