01/02/2006 | Japan, Korea

Asian universities gear up for global competition

By: Tony Martin

These mushrooming numbers should keep the statisticians brewing their coffee. Now let's look at the reasons for them and how you can take advantage of the new opportunities they represent. Much has to do with language � the speaking of a foreign language, that is.

JAPAN

Take Japan for example. Until recently, the prime source of foreign students at Japanese universities has been Japanese language schools located in major Japanese cities. Students visit the country to learn the language, they get to know and enjoy local culture and society, make friends, and progress smoothly to a university degree course taught in Japanese. However through a combination of government reform and market pressure, Japan's universities have now introduced many academic programs taught in the English language, which means that you do not need to learn Japanese to earn a Japanese university masters or PhD.

Professor George Harada is in charge of international matters at Hiroshima University of Economics and a director of JAFSA, the Japan Association of Foreign Student Administrators. He believes: �Major public and private universities in Japan have reacted quite quickly, and most of them quite positively, to ideas and strategies presented by the government on educational reform in the last few years. Many universities � both public and private � are ready to accept more international students by increasing degree courses and programs offered in English�.

Prof Harada�s beliefs are based on a recent survey of such programs by the Japan Association of Student Services (JASSO, formerly AIEJ). (See table) This shows that the public universities in particular have stepped up the number of masters and PhD programs taught in English. Altogether, sixty-five have been introduced since the year 2000, mainly in the sciences and engineering but with a greater recent trend towards business and social sciences.

Despite their reputation for conservatism, the public universities have progressed more strongly in this area than their private counterparts. Prof. Harada continues: �Compared to public universities, there were less university degree programs offered in English (in private universities). As a result, most of the international students that preferred to study major subjects in English attended public universities.

�However, in terms of overall numbers of international students being accepted, private universities have shown a much larger increase than public universities. The major reason is that most of the public universities have accepted international students on the graduate level, while private universities have accepted large numbers of international students on the undergraduate level. In general, the graduate programs have less in-take capacity than undergraduate programs.�

Another indicator that many Japanese universities are ready to accept more international students is their increase in participation in study abroad fairs held outside Japan to recruit students eligible for their programs. Some of the major universities are also setting up overseas offices, especially in the nearby Asian region, to make application and testing more readily available for students in those countries where there are many applicants.

Not only in Japan but throughout the region, universities are shedding their inward-looking culture and are internationalising, a key aspect of which is the much wider use of English � the world's "lingua franca" � in teaching both domestic and foreign students. University leaders, who may have paid lipservice to internationalisation in the past, are now laying down clear policies and strategies for bringing their institutions into the global frame.