"It's not like everything will be fixed if (Todai) shifts to autumn enrollment," Mineo Nakajima, president of Akita International University, told The Japan Times in a recent interview.
"The important things are its curriculum and factors such as credit transfers (with overseas academic institutions). . . . It also needs to radically change the current mindset of its faculty and employees," he said.
Nakajima suggested that Todai's leaders might benefit from taking a close look at Akita International University, which has made study abroad mandatory for all its students and enrolls new recruits in both spring and autumn.
His other proposals for Todai include adopting the international codes U.S. colleges use for each curriculum to indicate the subject and level of every class, keeping libraries open 24 hours a day so that students have a place to study at all times, and conducting classes entirely in English.
"In the age we live in, I think the key point is whether (a university) can disseminate information in English — the de facto international language," Nakajima said.
"And considering how many faculty members are able to communicate in English, I believe they have to thoroughly change (their current way of thinking). That means Japanese professors teaching Japanese students in Japanese," he said. "That's the first step to changing a faculty's way of thinking."
While Todai is considered the nation's top and most prestigious academic institution, its efforts to internationalize its campuses and student body have lagged behind the world's leading universities.
According to Todai's own data, only 1.9 percent of its undergraduate students were non-Japanese as of last May. At Harvard University the proportion stood at 10 percent in 2009, while 6 percent of undergraduates at Seoul University came from outside South Korea in 2010.
The same can be said of Todai's faculty, whose non-Japanese members accounted for only 2.3 percent of the total — just 88 teachers — as of May 2011.
By comparison, 20 percent of Oxford University's faculty were non-British and 14 percent of Massachusetts Institute of Technology's faculty were overseas nationals as long ago as 2006, according to a report by the Todai panel that recommended autumn enrollment.
To start catching up with leading overseas universities, Todai will kick off a new undergraduate course this autumn — titled "Program in English at Komaba (the undergraduate campus)" — and offering students the opportunity to take all classes in English.
But the course can only accommodate a few students, effectively diluting any real impact it might have on the Komaba campus, said Yuki Honda, a professor of education at Todai.
"The course has only a few dozen (places) for the 3,000 students in the same year," Honda said. "I really wish more foreign students from a wider variety of countries would come and make an impression (among Japanese students). . . . That would make (the academic environment) far more interesting."
Todai's planned reforms are not only being driven by internal panels and faculty members.
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