Nearly 3 out of 10 medical students in the country have filed for a leave of absence, the education ministry said Thursday, as students continue to protest the government’s decision to raise the medical student quota.
A total of 5,425 students have applied for a leave of absence with due documentation, such as signatures from professors and parents, accounting for 28.9 percent of the 18,793 medical school students who were enrolled across the country as of April last year, according to the ministry.
A higher number of such applications have been submitted since the government’s decision to increase the medical school quota by 2,000 from the current 3,058, but the rest are deemed invalid as they lack key required elements.
The ministry has maintained that all such leave of absence requests should not be granted because a collective action cannot constitute a legitimate reason for leave, and that no such application has been approved so far.
Some medical school students have been boycotting classes in prote
st of the quota hike decision.
Should the collective action continue, it could lead to students flunking out en masse because in most medical schools, regulations call for giving failing grades to those who are absent from over one-third or one-fourth of the total number of classes.
In an effort to prevent such scenarios, schools postponed the new semester, originally slated to begin in February, to early March, and many pushed the date even further to later this month, as the collective action of medical students has continued with no end in sight.
Source: Yonhap News Agency