Education Ministry discards materials of medical school quota discussions

The Ministry of Education revealed that it had scrapped materials of the medical school quota allocation committee meeting at the ‘Medical School Education Inspection Hearing’ held by the National Assembly Education Committee and the Health and Welfare Committee on Friday. The additional 2,000 medical school seats, to be implemented from next year, were allocated to 40 medical schools outside of the Seoul Metropolitan area through the allocation committee meeting, which was hosted three times in March. The Ministry of Education claimed that it was not required to keep meeting minutes as the quota assignment committee is not a statutory organization but an advisory body. Thus all reference materials for the meeting and notepads containing handwritten notes were destroyed. The Ministry of Education submitted only a four-page summary of the results of the first to third meetings to the National Assembly.

The Ministry of Education's claims that it did not keep any data while devising a policy with a large potential impact on the education and health system are lame and dubious. “We did not keep any data on topics that could raise controversy during the meeting,” Vice Minister of Education Oh Seok-hwan said. Increasing the medical student quota is a sensitive policy issue that has been repeatedly withdrawn in the past due to the high conflicts of interest. It does not make sense at all for public officials, who are responsible for public policy execution, had discarded handwritten notes, let alone neglecting to write meeting minutes. Such behavior only increases doubts about whether they were trying to hide something and whether there were instructions to destroy material, which could potentially raise issues in the future.

One month after medical residents resigned from hospitals in protest of the government’s policy to increase the medical school quota, the Ministry of Education held a quota allocation committee meeting from March 15 to 18 and determined the quota increase. During the three meetings, which took five hours and 30 minutes, the 1,000-page application for the medical school student quota increase was reviewed, and the quota was allocated. This would not have been possible if the allocation committee had not been providing a rubber stamp for the government’s decisions.

The government explained that the policy decision was made to resolve the gap in medical staff resources in essential medical care and rural areas. If it wishes to have the decision supported and to gain momentum in policy execution, the rationale for the policy and the decision-making process should be transparently disclosed to the public. Unilateral decision-making based on claimed justification will only increase conflict and undermine policy acceptance. The government’s one-sided push to increase the medical school quota, which the government did not even care to keep meeting minutes for, has resulted in political conflict and the shutdown of medical services for over six months. Its negligence to disclose any data on the decision-making process has undermined the legitimacy of the policy. We cannot help but hold the government responsible for hastily pushing forward the policy, obsessed with the quota number of 2,000 students.