Education in Japan
Makuhari Messe, just east of Tokyo, is one of those vast hangars where idols take the stage. Tonight’s entertainment looks like any other night. Strobe lighting swoops around the darkened arena, illuminating thousands of expectant faces. It’s a made-for-Instagram moment. Atsugiri Jason has been warming up the crowd. Chiba expects. Except, when Japan’s latest idols take the stage, they’re not […]
Anyone who believes that Japan will never embrace multilingualism would do well to picture this scene. Students at Japan’s elite universities are studying in English. Not just English, either: they learn about science in German and philosophy in French. European languages present a formidable challenge, but the students are not daunted. We’re in the early Meiji Period, of course, and […]
Japan is a nation at war. But there are no signs of DPRK missiles flying overhead. It’s a different, more insidious kind of war called the Global War for Talent, and it begins on the university campus. QS, a publisher of university rankings, has just placed Tokyo third in its 2016 list of the world’s best student cities, up from […]
Keidanren climbdown is just the latest clash of swords in the battle for Japanese universities Who owns Japanese universities? And what are they for anyway? Ministry of Education bureaucrats might answer crisply that universities are public and private corporations afforded special status for their role in cultivating young minds. Established for the common good, every Japanese university large and small—and […]
An Overview Education in Japan is not exactly showered with praise by foreign media. There are regular reports of falling academic standards, poor foreign language skills or universities that fail to rise to the global challenge. Yet education is one of Japan’s great success stories, resulting in a competitive, merit-based society with high literacy and technological achievement. The widely-cited OECD […]
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