Fold your pride and start constructive dialogue

The medical community and the government must fold their pride and engage in constructive dialogue.

The government will permit the leave of absence of medical students who have been ditching classes for nine months in protest of its plan to drastically increase the medical school admissions quota.

In a press briefing on Sunday, Education Minister Lee Ju-ho laid out emergency measures to normalize medical schools. The main takeaway of the latest measure is that medical students won’t receive any punitive actions, including expulsion, if they return to classes for the next school year. The government has been rolling back one strong action after another — from the ban on hospitals from accepting the resignations by trainee doctors in June to the prohibition on schools from approving the leave of absence filed by medical students. The emergency steps by the Education Ministry translate into the government’s acceptance of its responsibility for the current situation.

Few will tolerate compromising our medical education at the risk of producing substandard doctors. The quality of medical education should be assured regardless of the plan to increase the number of doctors through the enrollment quota increase.

Admissions to medical schools will increase to 4,567 next year from the current 3,058. As many as 7,600 students could be crammed into first-year classes if the majority of this year’s freshmen repeat the first year after their leave of absence. Some regional medical schools may have to accommodate a number of freshmen many times bigger than their current quota. The lecture rooms, professors and laboratory infrastructure must all be beefed up. The government promises to provide funding to increase faculties and classrooms, but whether the education quality can be guaranteed remains in question.

Still, medical schools can’t allow those students who missed this year’s courses to skip them and advance to the next grade. Seoul National University (SNU) was first to approve the leave of absence in fear of the impact on education quality. The government had to back off since other universities were poised to follow SNU. The government is also considering cutting the mandatory six-year medical school course to five years. There can be adjustments, but they must be verified by the medical community and thoroughly compared with overseas cases.

The medical community and the government must end their conflict and find a practical way out. They must cooperate to normalize the off-track medical education from next year. Just 3.4 percent of all medical students in Korea have paid tuition for the second semester — and only 2.8 percent returned to their classes. Some won’t return to school next year, too. Two year’s loss of medical doctors could spell disaster. The medical community and the government must fold their pride and engage in constructive dialogue.