Gov't probes SNU medical school for letting students go on leave

The Education Ministry on Wednesday launched an audit of the nation’s top medical school regarding its decision to approve student leave requests.

A person walks by a plaque of Seoul National University's College of Medicine in central Seoul on Wednesday. [NEWS1]

The Education Ministry on Wednesday launched an audit of the nation’s top medical school regarding its decision to approve student leave requests.

The inspection came two days after Seoul National University’s (SNU) College of Medicine reportedly permitted leave of absence requests for over 700 students for the 2024 spring semester en masse on Monday.

In opposition to the school’s decision, the government views the leave requests as invalid and unacceptable. Most medical students nationwide submitted leave requests to their schools in early spring when they started to boycott classes to protest the government’s health reform policies.

The audit team, consisting of 12 inspectors, reportedly conducted an on-site probe on Wednesday afternoon at the school’s campus in Seoul. The ministry aims to press the school “as harshly as it can” through the audit because other medical schools could take similar actions by citing SNU’s precedent.

In a statement released a day earlier, the ministry said it would "reprimand the school sternly and fix irregularities if any flaws were found in the school’s handling” of the requests. The ministry also denounced the school for “abandoning its duty to educate and nurture medical professionals.”

The approval was reportedly made by SNU medical school’s dean, who has full authority in processing students’ leave requests per the university’s academic code, according to Yonhap News Agency.

Inspectors walk into a building of Seoul National University located in southern Seoul on Wednesday afternoon to probe over details of leave request approval. [NEWS1]

On Wednesday, the university’s faculty council, representing all SNU professors, criticized the government for “mobilizing the coercive measure of conducting an audit to make the school cancel the approval.”

The council stressed that the university is obliged to “provide quality education based on autonomy.”

It also suggested that faculty councils at SNU and other universities could take joint action to counter the government's attempt to “tame colleges through suppressive means and violate students’ rights to study.”

An emergency steering committee representing SNU medical professors “endorsed” the dean’s decision to grant the leave requests, believing the measure is to “fulfill the school’s original responsibility” of cultivating qualified doctor candidates.

The professors agreed that “teaching a yearlong curriculum within two months before this year ends would be practically challenging” even when the schools’ undergraduates — currently on boycott — return to their classrooms by November.

The committee added that “the approval should have happened earlier.” It blamed the government for "destroying medical education" by preventing medical schools from processing leave of absence requests.

The professors said the school “cannot promote its undergraduates to higher academic years when they were not properly educated.” They also urged the ministry to think of measures to normalize medical education next year.

Empty lecture hall inside a medical school's building in Daegu in September. [YONHAP]

As SNU and the government clash, other medical schools are reportedly considering ways to handle the leave requests they receive.

An official from another university with a medical college told Yonhap News Agency that “it is dubious why SNU suddenly authorized the undergraduates’ leave requests when the state authority prohibited the processing.”

Another employee from a Seoul-based medical school told Yonhap News Agency that the school’s position regarding students’ leave of request “has not been decided yet.”

According to a report from local online news outlet etoday, the Education Ministry sent an official notice to medical schools nationwide on Wednesday asking for their cooperation in disapproving students’ requests for leaves of absence.

In addition to the students' leave of absence requests, which have been pending for months, the country has faced a protracted student boycott.

Of 19,374 registered students at medical schools nationwide, only 548 have attended their classes in the fall semester of the 2024 academic year, according to data submitted by the Education Ministry to Democratic Party lawmaker Jin Sun-mee. The attendance rate remained at 2.8 percent.

BY LEE SOO-JUNG [lee.soojung1@joongang.co.kr]