Medical School Divided into Pre-Med and Main Courses → Changed to Integrated 6-Year Program

Ministry of Education Attempts to Amend Enforcement Decree of Higher Education Act

Starting next year, the medical school curriculum, which is currently divided into 2 years of pre-medical and 4 years of medical courses, will be integrated, and first-year students will also be allowed to change their majors to expand their academic choices.

On the 28th, the Ministry of Education announced that it will revise 33 out of 115 articles in the Enforcement Decree of the Higher Education Act, centered on these changes, and will publicly announce the legislation for about 40 days from the 29th to August 8.

The Ministry of Education explained that the decree will be extensively revised in three directions: promoting the removal of rigid internal walls within universities that cause inflexible university operations, strengthening exchanges and cooperation with domestic and international universities, industries, and research institutions, and expanding opportunities for higher education participation for working adults and local residents.

First, the Ministry will abolish Article 9, Paragraph 2 of the Enforcement Decree, which states that "universities shall have departments or faculties as a principle," to support universities in freely managing their organizational structures in various ways such as establishing interdisciplinary departments (majors), operating free majors, and integrated student admissions.

To expand students' major selection rights, changing majors will now be allowed even for first-year students, who were previously completely excluded from this option.

Medical schools will be able to flexibly design and operate their curricula within a 6-year framework. This measure reflects the medical community's demands that the linkage between the 2-year pre-medical curriculum, which focuses on liberal arts lectures, and the 4-year medical curriculum, which involves intensive courses such as anatomy, biochemistry, and pathology, has been insufficient, and that the workload during the 4 years of medical courses is excessively heavy.

The establishment of online degree programs at general universities will be left to university autonomy. Currently, universities must obtain prior approval from the Ministry of Education to open online degree programs. Moreover, online degree programs were limited to advanced and new technology fields or joint programs with foreign universities. However, the Ministry of Education, recognizing the accumulation of universities' online lecture expertise since COVID-19, decided to allow online degree programs in all fields and abolish the prior approval requirement.

Additionally, the Ministry will establish grounds for operating joint curricula between domestic and international universities. The scope of recognizing graduation credits for joint curricula among domestic universities will be improved so that universities can determine it themselves through agreements, rather than being limited to within half of the graduation credits as currently stipulated.

Reflecting demands from the education sector, off-campus classes will be institutionalized by specifying their types as mobile classes and cooperative classes, and the prior approval system will be changed to a notification system. However, to prevent misuse, mobile classes will be limited to students who have difficulty attending due to welfare reasons such as disabilities, national athletes, and military personnel. Cooperative classes will be allowed through agreements with industries and research institutions. Even in this case, the scope of credit recognition will be limited to one-quarter of the graduation credits.

With this revision of the Enforcement Decree, the Ministry of Education announced that it will also resolve 11 regulatory innovation requests submitted by universities during the Glocal University application process.

If anyone wishes to submit opinions on the partial revision of the Enforcement Decree, they can do so via the Integrated Legislation Notice Center website (http://opinion.lawmaking.go.kr) or by mail, fax, or email.

After collecting opinions, the Ministry plans to proceed with the main revision process and aims to implement the revised Enforcement Decree as early as next year.

Lee Ju-ho, Deputy Prime Minister for Social Affairs and Minister of Education, stated, "We will boldly remove regulations that hinder universities from innovating autonomously and creatively by breaking down walls inside and outside universities, supporting the transformation of universities."

This content was produced with the assistance of AI translation services.