Internationalising Asian universities

Last time I wrote about international university rankings and wondered whether they were biased toward English-speaking countries. This time I want to say something about how some Asian countries are trying to attract more foreign students by changing their semesters and increasing the number of courses in English. Previously, American students wanting to study for one year in Malaysia, Thailand and Japan, and Malaysians, Thais and Japanese wanting to study for one year in America might have to take two years away from their home university because of differences in the school calendar. But Malaysian universities have started to change their school year so that it begins in September, coinciding with North America and Europe. Many Thai universities will do the same from next year, and Japan’s University of Tokyo is making similar changes.

Despite the improved international rankings of several Japanese universities, such as Tokyo, Kyoto, Tokyo Institute of Technology and Keio, according to JASSO, the Japan Student Services organisation (http://www.jasso.go.jp/index_e.html), only 4% of students in Japan are from foreign countries. The number of fulltime foreign university teachers is also relatively small. Moreover, according to the Ministry of Education, the number of Japanese students studying overseas has fallen by 50% in the last ten years. Many people think that all of this is because English is not widely used in Japanese education. But things may be changing.

Recently, Time magazine’s website reported on new programmes for undergraduates at the University of Tokyo starting this month that will be taught entirely in English. These are open to Japanese students but will include participants from 14 other countries. Other universities with programmes in English include Waseda and ICU in Tokyo and Doshisha in Kyoto. Meanwhile the government’s Global 30 initiative aims to increase the number of Japanese students going overseas. Some people think that these changes may help foreigners more than they help the Japanese, however. Already, thousands of Asian students are getting degrees from Japanese universities and then getting jobs with Japanese companies. Many of them were already fluent in Japanese before they came to Japan, especially in writing, which is somewhat easier if you have a language background in Chinese or Korean. Having studied alongside Japanese students, they are attractive to many Japanese companies when they go for job interviews because they speak Japanese and understand Japanese culture well, but they also speak one or two other Asian languages and English well, unlike most of their Japanese friends.

If more courses are offered in English, it may mean that more foreign students come to Japan, not just from East Asia, where Japanese has long been a popular subject, but also from Southeast and South Asia and from further afield. Many of them will go on to become proficient in Japanese and knowledgeable about Japanese culture, even if they study in English, and so they may look for jobs with Japanese companies. It is already hard enough for young Japanese people to get jobs – indeed one of the main reasons many of them say they do not go abroad is fear that they will miss out on the very competitive job-hunting process. Making Japanese universities more international through increasing the number of courses in English may therefore be risky. But with the economy continuing to be sluggish, and English spoken much more widely in booming economies like China, Singapore and Malaysia, it appears to be a risk the government is prepared to take.