Japan's schools flunking at global level: symposium

In this age of globalization, firms and businesspeople must compete with their rivals on a worldwide scale. This is also spreading to academicians and educational institutions, universities in particular.

Panelists discuss education in Japan at a recent Tokyo forum organized by Temple University Japan Campus. From left are Kirk Patterson, Temple's dean; Douglas Peterson, CEO of Citigroup Japan Holdings; Bruce Stromach, president of Yokohama City University; and freelance journalist Nozomu Nakaoka. PHOTO COURTESY OF TEMPLE UNIVERSITY JAPAN CAMPUS

Temple University Japan Campus recently organized a symposium in Tokyo titled "International Education in Japan — A Concept in Search of Substance" in commemoration of the 25th anniversary of the campus's establishment.

The keynote speakers and panelists agreed that the Japanese education system, particularly universities, is in need of sweeping revamp to remain competitive on a global scale.

The audience of some 300 heard daunting figures about the poor evaluation abroad of Japanese universities.

For instance, the World University Rankings for 2006, issued by The Times Higher Education Supplement, the weekly education magazine published by an affiliate of The Times of London, shows that only three Japanese universities are in the top 100.

They are Japan's top-notch national universities — University of Tokyo (ranked 19th), Kyoto University (29th) and Osaka University (70th). None of the country's venerable and highly prestigious private universities, including Keio and Waseda, made the top 100.

American universities dominate the rankings — 11 out of the top 20 and 33 out of the top 100. More alarming is that five Chinese universities are in the top 100, with Beijing University ranked 14th.

As is the case with other rankings of its kind, the evaluation method requires scrutiny. For the THES survey, review by peers, the number of foreign teaching staff and students, the faculty-student ratio and citations of treatises by academic journals are key factors in the scoring.

As Sakie Fukushima, regional managing director of Japan at Korn/Ferry International, said in her presentation as one of the two keynote speakers, many foreign-affiliated companies operating in Japan find it difficult to recruit qualified people due to a mismatch between supply and demand.

She also voiced concern about the tendency in which Japanese youth are becoming less outgoing and losing the spirit of seeking a challenge. She warned that Japan and its people could be isolated from the rest of the world if this trend prevails.

Panelist Douglas Peterson, CEO of Citigroup Japan Holdings Ltd., told the forum that Japanese employees are well-qualified in terms of intellectual standards, professional knowledge and computer skills. They are particularly good at teamwork, he said, but when it comes to communication skills, they come up wanting.

For instance, Japanese managers and employees are always silent participants in his company's international teleconferences, whereas their Chinese and South Korean colleagues, not to mention the Americans and Europeans, dominate the conversation, Peterson said.

He warned that Japanese education and educational institutions need to innovate to foster qualified human resources in this age of global competition if Japan wants to grow further economically and maintain its status as the world's second-largest economy.

Panelist Bruce Stronach provided the insider's view on this subject as president of Yokohama City University. He is the first non-Japanese to head one of the nation's public universities.

The Japanese education system, he said, is too rigid to adapt to change and the needs of the times.

He referred to government red tape, the conventional employment practice for university graduates, the lack of preparedness among school administrators and teaching staff to international competition, and insufficient cross-border or domestic exchanges of personnel and credits as factors that hinder Japanese universities' "internationalization."

Universities worldwide are rapidly evolving, and those in Japan will end up as losers in the global competition unless they work harder to catch up, he warned.

In the same context, Kirk Patterson, dean of Temple University Japan Campus, told The Japan Times at the symposium that Japanese universities need to make serious efforts to accommodate more qualified and promising foreign teaching staff and students on their campuses. Otherwise, the schools will find it difficult to attract not only foreign students but also Japanese students who might choose to study at internationally recognized universities in the U.S. or Europe, or even in other parts of Asia, he said.