Education minister downplays concerns over professor shortage amid medical school enrollment increase

Critics have long pointed out that it would be virtually impossible to hire sufficient medical professors to meet the increased demand from students.

On Monday, however, Minister of Education Lee Ju-ho showed optimism, saying, “There does not seem to be any major difficulties” in recruiting professors in keeping with an increase in the medical school enrollment quota.

Minister Lee’s remark came at a plenary session of the National Assembly Education Committee. At the session, Rep. Jin Sun-mi of the main opposition Democratic Party of Korea (DPK) criticized the government for “painting a rosy picture” without listening to the voices from the medical field.

“According to the Education Ministry's plan, more than 1,000 professors need to be recruited (due to the increase in medical students),” Rep. Jin said. ”Already, professors are saying that the replenishment of professors will not go as planned. Still, the ministry is painting a rosy picture, saying everything will be fine.”

Jin continued, “The education minister says he can recruit professors and ensure the quality of education in schools. Minister Lee said he could solve the problem when medical students took a massive leave of absence, but he couldn't fix it over the past six months. Hiring more professors is supposed to be impossible, but the minister has kept saying everything will be OK.”

Rep. Jin pointed out that the public clinical professor system, which is considered a failed policy due to the difficulty in recruiting professors, is an example of the difficulty in recruiting medical school professors.

“The public clinical professor system, which hires public clinical professors as part of a project to support national hospitals and allows them to rotate to provincial medical centers for a certain period, has kept failing,” the opposition lawmaker said.

In response, Minister Lee refuted that while the public clinical professorship program faces difficulties recruiting professors due to their unstable status, this will not be the case with hiring medical school professors.

“The public clinical professorship system had considerable difficulties recruiting professors because of their unstable status,” Lee admitted. “However, we are constantly communicating with the field to recruit professors for provincial medical schools, and there seems to be no major difficulties.”