The cancellation of classes in universities occurs more frequently and abruptly, compared to high school classes. The reason being, even though universities have their own school regulations on academic affairs, professors are indeed the sole hosts of university lectures. Seen at such an angle, cancellation of classes in universities is mostly accepted as a common phenomenon. In fact, what often occurs to be troublesome is ‘not’ cancelling classes. Several classes being held on the National Foundation Day of Korea which was a public holiday drew a number of claims from students. Indeed, having to stay at lectures on a public holiday while others are freely doing other activities may seem irrational from the students’ perspectives.
According to the regulations on academic affairs of POSTECH, each subject has a required number of classes that need to be completed and there has to be supplementary lectures if a professor cancels the lecture inevitably so that the number of classes can be reached. However, it is also specified in the regulations that public holidays are exempted from the required number of classes in advance, so skipping of classes due to public holidays does not have to be followed by makeup lessons.
To investigate professors’ opinions on continuing classes on public holidays despite of school regulations, the Postech Times interviewed Professor Park Seong Jin from the Department of Mechanical Engineering. Prof. Park claimed throughout the interview about the importance of delivering such schedules in advance to students. He said professors cannot be the sole hosts of lectures and students who participate in lectures also take parts, so if students are not willing to take lectures, professors cannot successfully deliver knowledges to the students. However, the professors’ circumstances must be acknowledged as well. Even the professors who have profound experience of teaching cannot deliver large amount of knowledge within a few number of lectures, because persuading students to agree with what the professors teach and make them understand takes time. It is going to be more time taking for subjects that are mostly based on experiments, since conducting experiments need borrowing equipment, facilities, etc.
 Furthermore, there is a difference between teachers and professors; even though professors and teachers both teach lessons to their students, professors are researchers in essence. Therefore, throughout the semester, professors inevitably come to cancelling lectures due to various reasons such as business trip, research trip, participating in seminars hosted by academic societies, etc. Having to teach one entire subject in-depth within limited semester to students is therefore challen-ging even for professors and sometimes public holidays should be sacrificed for lectures if there is no other possible day for supplementary classes. Prof. Park concluded with the statement that lectures are made not just by professors but many people, with much efforts and time, so if lectures have to be held on public holidays then shall be it.