Hello Everyone!
The News Group’s first article, “Universities’ Failing Grades,” comes from the Japan Times. It is linked below, or can be found by googling “japan times universities’ failing grades 10/2/2016”
Since the topic of university rankings came up in the class, we thought this article was appropriate for this week. The writer discusses Prime Minister Abe ‘s “target of Japan getting at least 10 universities in the world’s top 100 within 10 years,” the realities of actually meeting that target, and how Japan’s bureaucracy is a large cause of its failings.
Thanks for sharing Kendall! I will reiterate here the comment Cho Ito made under my presentation, that the key to effective policymaking is setting realistic, achievable targets and building upon them gradually to achieve major goals. The Japanese PM’s goal of “getting at least 10 universities in the world’s top 100 within 10 years,” are good politics, but will definitely lead to resources being squandered when they could be utilized more efficiently on a policy goal with a realistic objective that could be built upon over the long term.
Thank you for sharing us an interesting news, Kendall! As far as I know, a majority of university presidents in Japan have already noticed that they need to improve university’s system in terms of education, research, industry collaboration, and language (English) in order to compete with foreign countries’ universities. However, one of the biggest problems for them is university’s bureaucratic system, which could prevent president’s leadership for reforms. In order to change this situation, MEXT (ministry of education in Japan) has been considering changing the law to give university’s president more power. Personally, this kind of reform should be implemented as soon as possible to improve Japanese universities’ position in the world.
Thanks for sharing the news, Kendall. We can relate this news to one of our required reading last week “The Road to Academic Excellence”. Figure1.1 mentioned several characteristics and key factors of a world-class university. In my opinion, the language barrier is just an excuse. To conquer such barrier is exactly one of the important aspects to show the internationalization and the excellence of a university. And that’s why Chinese universities keen on building international exchange programs. Fudan even collaborated with LSE last year to establish a new public policy institute in Shanghai which will recruit students all over the world and offer pure English courses to students. The mission of the institute is to bring more students to participate the global organizations. In my opinion, the huge progress on internationalization in China should attribute to the support from the government so that universities avoid the very complicated Chinese bureaucracy and have the autonomy to cooperate with international world-class universities. Hence, I think it is more crucial for the Japanese government to give favorable policies.
Thank you Kendall for bringing our attention to this situation that Japan’s HE industry is facing right now! I am particularly intrigued by the point that Rafferty raises about universities in Japan falling behind in terms of international rankings, partly because the bulk of ‘Japanese scholarship is written in the vernacular’ and not in English. This is a challenge that is not only particular to Japan, but in parts of the world that do not traditionally teach university courses in English. On the one hand, it is important to promote one’s national language (especially at the university level) because so much of a country’s distinct culture, heritage and way of thinking is encoded in its language. Yet on the other hand, universities that are not traditionally Anglo-centric are compelled to reinvent their approaches and remain competitive in an increasingly anglicised world (in the sense that English has become the lingua franca across developed countries). It is a difficult balance to strike, and serious compromises have to be made either way, depending on a policymaker or a university executive board’s decision to prioritise one language over another.
Thank you Kendall for this interesting and somewhat painful (to me as a policymaker) article!
Althogh I wasn’t in charge of HE, as an alumnus of the University of Tokyo I admit that this university is now way falling behind top universities. No class offered in English, very few classes with interactive discussion (unlike here SIPA), and faculties too absorbed in research to give a good guidance to students.
I believe that such drastic reforms as offering all the classes in English should be necessary in order to get out of this “closed universities”.
In addition, although not directly relevant to this topic, the problem is that the transition from K-12 to HE is not working well; students enter universities by just looking at rankings without clear future vision, which I will have to redress as well after going back to Japan.
Sorry for the late entry into the discussion and thanks for sharing this article!
For me, the author’s recommendations reflect several key discourses and ways of thinking: the emphasis on internationalization (“bring in more foreigners, both as academics and students, and make them welcome”) as well as the new public management discourse (bring in “someone who has run a complex company with international operations”).
Given that these narratives are prevalent today, it would perhaps be good to more critically analyze them. Some questions that could potentially be asked include: Should leadership come from “within” e.g. someone who has risen through the ranks of the university and has intimate and deep expertise of its workings, or from “outside” (new insights, fresh ideas?), though of course these in reality or rarely either or questions; secondly, when we talk about trying to diversify universities, what kinds of diversities are we actually talking about (nationality, schools of thought/training, gender, race, previous experience?), and does diversity always translate into productive learning? How would the inflow of foreigners be perceived by the wider local and national society that the university, despite its global aspirations, is still embedded in? Would these foreign students and academics be viewed as unwanted competition for scarce places in popular courses?
Given the growing emphasis that universities and governments are placing on international rankings, I am definitely looking forward to more discussion on their methodology and impacts!
Hiro,
I found really interesting when you commented that Tokyo University has no class offered in English. However, I know some not high ranking universities in Japan offered entire program in English, for example, Ritsumeikan Asia Pacific University (APU in Beppu). I think it may due to its own academic excellence does not attract domestic students, so they have to hope international population fill the classroom seats. APU has its entire graduate program with English as first official language. I found interesting that different universities in Japan chosen different path to increase its international existence.
In addition, i think the goal of Education Institution to “getting at least 10 universities in the world’s top 100 within 10 years” is purely due to the pressure from the media and tax payers. Again, the ranking sometime can not taken as the only one criteria to evaluate the quality of the universities. I think for the administrators, it makes more sense if they could efficiently evaluate the teaching quality and how practical the teaching related with the real world practice.