[Reporter’s Notebook] '2,000 Students' Mechanically Allocated to Regional Medical Schools

"If they had said 179 or 216, I think there would have been some scientific basis. But 100 or 200 seems like just fitting the numbers, doesn’t it? It’s the same as when they announced a total increase of 2,000."

A resident doctor in Daejeon who resigned in protest against the government's medical school quota increase sighed over the phone while speaking with a reporter after the quota allocation announcement on the 20th.

The medical community is pouring criticism that the government’s allocation of quotas to each medical school was mechanically distributed as a form of regional appeasement. Among the 32 medical schools with increased quotas this time, only Kangwon National University (132 students) has a quota number that does not end with zero. Critics argue that if the differences in regional medical service gaps and educational conditions of each medical school had been properly reflected, the numbers would not have been so neatly rounded. The claim that this is a "desk-based administration distributing numbers prettily and arbitrarily (Korean Medical Association)" cannot be easily dismissed.

The government set the quotas for seven out of nine base national universities?excluding Kangwon National University and Jeju National University?equally at 200 students. However, the population differences in the regions where these seven medical schools are located exceed twofold. Busan, the most populous city, has 3.29 million people, while Chungbuk Province, the least populous, has 1.59 million. Both Busan National University and Chungbuk National University medical schools have a final quota of 200 students. There is some validity to the medical community’s criticism that the quotas were equalized to prevent backlash from regions receiving fewer students ahead of the general election.

Concerns have also been raised that in order to meet the number 200, insufficient consideration was given to on-site educational conditions. Although the admission quotas for these universities next year are all the same, their current quotas vary. Jeonbuk National University has the highest at 142 students, followed by Busan National University and Jeonnam National University at 125, and Kyungpook National University and Chungnam National University at 110. Gyeongsang National University and Chungbuk National University have 76 and 49 students respectively. At Chungbuk National University’s medical school, the quota has more than quadrupled at once, leading to outcries that proper education is impossible.

In about ten years, when the increased medical students become specialists, Jeonbuk may need more doctors than Gyeongnam, or Kyungbuk may need more than Jeonnam. The government needs to precisely predict future medical demand in each region and readjust the medical school quota distribution 'individually' even now. Only by doing so can the government’s announced goals of "resolving the medical gap between metropolitan and non-metropolitan areas" and "building a new medical ecosystem supporting essential regional medical care" based on this quota allocation standard be properly achieved.

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