Academics have warned that medical schools are becoming “severely overburdened” and other universities are suffering as thousands of students abandon South Korea’s most prestigious institutions in pursuit of careers as doctors.
Almost 2,500 undergraduates left Seoul National University (SNU), Yonsei University and Korea University in 2024. This was the largest wave of dropouts at the institutions – known collectively as SKY – in 18 years.
Official data released in late August shows departures are up 17 per cent from last year. Korea University recorded the sharpest losses with 1,054 withdrawals, followed by 942 at Yonsei and 485 at SNU, the highest combined total in nearly two decades.
Most of those who quit were studying natural sciences or the humanities.
The government’s decision to expand medical school intakes has been the key driving force. Last year, quotas were increased from about 3,000 to 5,000 students across 40 institutions as part of an effort to address chronic doctor shortages in an ageing society.
The change has set off a scramble for places, with students leaving even the most prestigious campuses to spend years preparing for medical entrance exams.
But there are worries about what this means for the institutions affected by dropouts and the medical schools expected to cater for more students.
“Medical schools are severely overburdened,” said Theodore Jun Yoo, professor of history at Yonsei University. “Staff are stretched thin, forced to teach more classes due to strikes and the influx of old and new students.”
The shift has been building for several years but has now reached unprecedented scale.
Figures from Jongro Academy show that nearly 1,900 students dropped out of the three SKY universities in 2022.
By 2023, more than one in four of the country’s highest scorers on the university entrance exam had rejected offers from these institutions to study medicine instead.
And a nationwide survey by the Korea Employment Information Service found that 20 per cent of primary and secondary pupils aspired to medical careers, with doctors among the country’s best paid and most respected professionals.
For Robert Fouser, former associate professor of Korean language education at SNU, the phenomenon reflects wider anxieties about the job market.
He told 探花视频: “The rise in dropouts at the SKY universities is linked to perceptions about future career prospects, particularly with the spread of AI.
“Japan has experienced a similar trend where students prefer regional medical schools to a major in, say, the humanities at the University of Tokyo.
“These departures reveal that non-medical disciplines, especially humanities and sciences, are no longer seen as stable career paths. Declining birth-rates reduce demand for teachers and researchers, weakening South Korea’s ability to maintain leadership in key technologies. While attracting overseas talent can help, salary gaps with the US make it difficult to retain skilled professionals.”
However, Yoo suggested this may not be the best long-term plan for students.
“People are abandoning science and the humanities, but doctors should be more concerned about the rapid advancement of AI.
“Down the road, it’s going to get way more specialised, and folks with engineering degrees might have a better shot at sticking around. Even before the strikes, many paediatricians had switched to dermatology because there were fewer children, resulting in less demand.”
He called on the government to “slow things down” by making medical education more expensive and requiring medical students to work for six years in the countryside after graduation.
“The government talks about balance, but unless they actually shake things up, this race to medicine will continue to wreck universities – and the whole country will miss out on fresh ideas.”
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