Over 4,300 more faculty members needed amid med school quota hike

Thirty-two medical schools have requested from the government 4,301 additional faculty members over the next six years, in order to address an anticipated faculty shortage in light of the state's plan to expand the medical school enrollment quota across the country.

The medical schools slated for a quota increase next year submitted their requests for the thousands of additional faculty members to the Education Ministry in March, according to the report compiled by Rep. Jin Sun-mi of the main opposition Democratic Party of Korea.

The Yoon Suk Yeol government in February announced its initial plan to add 10,000 more medical doctors by 2035, phase one of which involves increasing the enrollment quota at medical schools by around 2,000 by the next school year. The government took a step back from this initial plan to an enrollment hike of around 1,500 for next year, but doctors across the country have nevertheless been fiercely opposing the plan.

But the recent report suggests problems in being able to hire enough faculty members to accommodate the additional number of medical students. The government said it will add 1,000 more faculty members to the state-run medical schools over the next three years, but the report indicates students' actual need is for substantially more faculty than that.

"If the imminent faculty need following the medical student quota hike for next year is so great, I can't help but wonder if the Ministry of Education's plan to be announced next month will have feasible solutions (for this problem)," Jin said.

If no additional faculty members are added to the schools, the student-to-faculty ratio will rise to as high as 17.4 faculty per medical student, in case of Chungnam National University.

Specifically, the nine public medical schools have requested 2,363 more medical professors, while 23 private medical schools have asked for 1,938 more.

The medical schools at Jeju National University and CNU each requested 23 additional basic medical science professors for next year, the most of all schools.

JNU also requested the most faculty members for clinical medicine -- 200 -- followed by CNU requesting a further 105.