Education Ministry: Med school curriculum can be shortened to 5 years

The Ministry of Education announced that first-year medical students returning to school next year can shorten their education to 5.5 or five years. As the medical students who wished to take a leave of absence in opposition to the expansion of medical schools are approved unconditionally, the increased number of new students for the next year and the returning students are likely to take classes simultaneously. The ministry came up with the idea of shortening the curriculum as a measure to relieve overcrowding.

Universities that have been forced to take on the burden of increasing the number of medical students in the name of autonomy are in trouble. Unconditional leave of absence has been a measure that medical schools have been demanding to normalize education, but as of Friday, only six out of 40 medical schools nationwide have approved leaves of absence. The financial impact of granting a leave of absence is severe, as universities must refund tuition or carry it over to the following year. In particular, private universities that have expanded their medical programs are struggling to invest in education and training facilities without government support. To make matters worse, other colleges are opposing an increase in financial resources allocated to medical schools amid financial difficulties caused by the prolonged tuition freeze. The problems are self-inflicted by the universities, which demanded more enrollment than they could handle in response to the government’s unreasonable expansion of medical schools.

Regardless of whether or not the universities approve the leave of absence, students are unlikely to return immediately, making the deterioration of medical education inevitable. The increased number of new students plus the returning students will have to be trained and educated together for up to 11 years. Even if online lectures are used to replace classroom classes, the training and practice will likely be limited to ‘observation.’ The Ministry of Education’s plan to recruit 1,000 professors for national medical schools in three years is also facing difficulties due to the high demand. In the worst-case scenario, the government claimed that the medical school curriculum could be shortened to five years, and no one would be convinced by the curriculum of six years for veterinary school and five years for medical school.

The direct cause of all this chaos is the government’s decision to expand the number of medical students without a reasonable ‘Plan B,’ even though it was expected that there would be a mass backlash from medical students. Even without the mass leave of absence, an increase of 2,000 students per year is beyond the capacity of the educational system. The government claims to have decided on the size of the expansion based on the demands of individual medical schools. Still, the government is ultimately responsible for the supply of medical personnel. It should recognize the error in its medical school expansion policy and negotiate with the medical community with a flexible attitude.