Take a breather and resume dialogue

All stakeholders must join the consultative body or find other ways to start dialogue so that they prevent this protracted crisis from continuing in 2025.

In a major backtracking from its hands-on approach, the government agreed to leave it up to individual universities to decide whether to grant leave to medical school students who have been missing classes since the government announced a plan to increase the medical school enrollment quota in February. The government earlier offered to allow academic leave on the condition that students return to classes from next year.

Education Minister Lee Ju-ho conveyed the decision during a video conference with presidents of 40 universities running medical schools. He said the government will allow universities to decide whether to accept leave requests by medical students. Presidents of the universities welcomed the government’s hands-off decision and promised to do their best to normalize the off-track medical education from next year.

The government had no other choice, as its ultimatum of making students choose to return to class from next semester if they wished to avoid suspension had little effect in persuading students who had taken a leave of absence for several months.

What matters most is public health, and the ultimate goal of medical education is to train doctors to their full capacity. In a statement released earlier this week, national universities urged the government to give medical schools autonomy in dealing with students who missed classes this year. A council of religious leaders also made a similar plea.

In a fortunate development, the government finally paid heed to outside voices. The government had disallowed universities from accepting leave requests so as to punish students’ synchronized move with junior doctors in their walkout from general hospitals. Despite the hard-line stance, enrollment in the second semester at medical schools stopped at a mere 3.4 percent. Since few are attending classes this month, the government had to admit dysfunction in the medical school education program.

The government drew sneers for its reasoning that classes can be stretched beyond the usual hours and breaks to meet the required class hours if students return by next month. It even came with the bizarre idea of allowing students to move onto next school year if they sit for tests regardless of their grade or attendance record.

With the removal of government meddling, universities and medical community must do their utmost to normalize medical education programs. The ball is now in the court of the medical community. The pride game between doctors and the government with public health at stake must stop as soon as possible. All stakeholders must join the consultative body or find other ways to start dialogue so that they prevent this protracted crisis from continuing in 2025.