グローバル化にフィットした教育を模索する日本の現実。
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Learning Curve: With a Push, Japan’s Universities Go Global
To stay competitive, more schools are welcoming international students and teachers, promoting bi-lingual programs of study, and encouraging young Japanese to study abroad.
By Lucy Birmingham / Tokyo | September 17, 2012 TimeMag
For Mai Hoai Giang, a student from Vietnam, securing a job in Japan after graduation couldn’t have been easier. No less than 300 corporate recruiters flocked to her school, the Asia Pacific University, which prides itself on bilingual programs. Mai, who is fluent in Japanese, English and Vietnamese, was snapped up by Fast Retailing Inc. and is now working as a Uniqlo shop assistant manager in Tokyo. Eventually, she hopes to be transferred to her home country, where the retailer is expanding. “I’ve always wanted to be in an international environment,” she said.
Japan could use a lot more people like Mai. Faced with anemic economic growth, an aging workforce, and a shrinking population, the world’s most indebted country is realizing that to grow, it must go global. Leading this push are the country’s Universities who are, with government support, embracing a more cosmopolitan approach by welcoming international students and teachers, promoting bi-lingual programs of study, and encouraging young Japanese to study abroad. “We need a change in mindset” says Kuniaki Sato, deputy director of the Higher Education bureau at the Ministry of Education. “The world is globalizing whether they like it or not.”
The change has been slow in coming — and there’s a long way to go. Despite billions of yen in scholarships for international students and exchange programs since the 1950s, between 2009 AND 2011, only about 4% of students at Japan’s 750-760 private and national universities came from other countries, according to the Japan Student Services Organization. Among Japan’s university faculty, only 5% were foreign, and most were teaching English. The Education Ministry says that since 2000, there has been a 50% drop in Japanese university students studying abroad.
Though some Japan-watchers instinctively blame the country’s youth, the inward-looking stance is in many ways a systemic, institutional problem. Japan starts its academic year in April, rather than September, which complicates academic credit reciprocity and the timing of student exchanges. Students may also be wary of spending a semester or year abroad because they could miss out on corporate recruitment. Japanese students typically spend most of their junior year job-hunting in a long-entrenched system called shukatsu. They worry that they’ll be overlooked, or be considered too different, if they skip it. Meanwhile, high school language classes typically do not prepare students to study abroad in a foreign tongue.
To compete in a global environment, Japanese universities must change. The stinging reality is that the country’s colleges don’t rank well internationally. Japan’s most prestigious school, the University of Tokyo, ranked just 30th in the 2011-2012 Times Higher Education Ranking. Second best is Kyoto University, which ranked as 52nd, and 3rd is Japan’s top science and technology university, Tokyo Institute of Technology, at 108th. “The most important challenge for Japanese universities is guaranteeing we meet academic world standards, particularly in comparison with the United States,” said Dr. Yoshinao Mishima, Tokyo Institute of Technology’s newly appointed president. Mishima has been behind the university’s new initiative to collaborate with top schools in Europe and the U.S.. “Along with sending out students for international exchange, we also need to send out faculty for training in the U.S. Hiring more international faculty is another way.”
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More are trying. Doshisha University in Kyoto is one of the few Japanese universities to have full-time, tenured foreign faculty. American professor Gregory Poole was hired away from a Japanese national university to teach at Doshisha’s new Institute of Liberal Arts, which launched in April 2011. Courses are taught in English with about 50 foreign students accepted per year. Japanese students in other departments can also participate. “We’ve been sort of trying to fit a square peg into a round hole,” says Poole of the endeavor. “But we’re making it work.”
Tokyo University, also known as Todai, will launch two English-only undergraduate programs this October, with 38 students from 14 countries participating. Japanese students can join the classes during their junior and senior years. The venerable institution has been slow to join the go-global shift at the undergraduate level. “The concept of undergraduate recruiting is new to Todai. Admissions have been ‘sacred territory,’” explains program director Dr. Tadashi Uchino. While 18% of graduate students are from overseas, only 5% of undergrads are foreign. And for Japanese undergrads, there is no formal international exchange program in place.
Funding for programs at all three universities comes largely from the Ministry of Education. The Global 30 initiative launched in 2008, kick-started the international push. The goal was to bring in 300,000 undergraduate foreign students to 30 universities by 2020. Severe budget cuts, though, whittled down funding to 13 elite universities until 2013. For Todai, Doshisha and the other 11 institutions, it may be hard to fund the programs they’ve just managed to start.
Indeed, it seems government priorities have now shifted. The new Global 30 Plus program from 2012-2017, and the 2011 Reinventing Japan are aimed at sending Japanese undergrads abroad via university collaborations, rather than bringing foreign students in. “The ultimate goal is tied in with improving Japan’s economy,” says Tomohiro Yamano, deputy director-general of the Ministry of Education, Higher Education Bureau. “More specifically, for Japanese graduates to work for Japanese companies that will do business around the world and become more successful.”
But success often has a price. It remains to be seen if the next batch of worldly, foreign-educated graduates will choose to build their lives, or their businesses, at home. Keisuke Kido, a 2007 APU graduate, set up a property management company in Malaysia that helps Japanese people invest in a special economic zone near Singapore. “My dream is to go back to Japan and set up my business there,” he said. “But the political system in Japan is not good right now and the yen is so strong. Business is booming. Looks like I’ll stay here for now.”
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アメリカでの韓国人移民の教育熱心。
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Korean students, parents do their pre-college homework
An Ivy League school? Or one in the UC system? Thousands of people of Korean heritage swarm the 2012 College Fair in Irvine, hoping to find the
By Anh Do, Los Angeles Times September 16, 2012, 9:42 p.m.
He's only 11. Still, BJ Bae blended in with the thousands of people of Korean heritage who swarmed an Orange County college fair this weekend. He stopped to sign up for a concentration test so "I can know what job might be good for me."
Angela Kim, 10, headed straight for the Stanford University table, then UC Berkeley, then Columbia University. "We have lots of choices," she said confidently.
The mothers of both children tagged along, stuffing handbooks into their bags, promising to review them together when they get home.
"I'm just stunned by how early the parents are preparing their kids," said Jay Tsai, a recruiter for Yale University, as he surveyed the crowd at the 2012 College Fair in Irvine. The event, sponsored by the Korea Daily newspaper, drew more than 4,000 people — even in 100-degree heat.
Koreans and other Asians placing a premium on academic achievement and college preparation is not new. But to Tsai, the intense interest and the young age of some of those at the event seemed to signal something that is new.
"This tells me it's getting more competitive than ever before," he said.
Ed Johnson, a veteran admissions officer for the U.S. Military Academy at West Point, called it an "amazing gathering." He was eyeing students with top-notch SAT scores and "a motivation to serve," he said. "And, in fact, Korean families have so much motivation. They raise the standard."
Around him, participants were crossing off checklists, consulting a map of the event included in the Korean paper's 100-page guide and trying to figure out where to go. They fanned across the campus of Bethel Korean Church to chapel rooms, lecture halls and the gym, learning the nitty-gritty of financial planning and what's required by Ivy League schools as opposed to University of California campuses.
Private tutors and consultants tried to lure them with their services, including how to get college application essays exactly right.
"We give that extra push. Sometimes, kids have the grades already, but they're confused when they sit down to express their feelings," said Gina Kim, operations analyst for Flex College Prep, which has offices in Arcadia, Irvine and L.A.'s Koreatown. Buyers snapped up $10 copies of a guide written by her firm's chief executive: "Getting In: Insider Tips on College Admissions for Immigrant Families."
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"A lot of Korean families want the brand-name school," Kim said. "We actually try to listen to the student's opinion. We want the student to thrive."
Anna Seok, who manages Admission Masters Educational Consulting Group, offers prep packages from $450 to $4,500. Among them: GPA management. Students and instructors can talk weekly and chart progress.
Students can join clubs devoted to subjects ranging from speech and debate to robotics and NASA — the kinds of extracurricular activities appealing to recruiters.
"We help Korean families find out what type of learner their child is," Seok said, "and from there we work with them to succeed."
Among those working the crowd was an overseas television crew taping a one-hour special on the fair, now in its seventh year. It's one of four such events in the nation.
"This is very important for Korean American society," said Jeongkie Kim, director of EBS America, an education channel. "While many people can be here, many more people can't be here, and parents from Korea aim to send their children to college in the U.S. That is the big goal."
In the cafeteria, Sukha Kim and his son, Ryan, ate $2 ramen sold by the Irvine Korean Parents Assn. "I want my son to have a broad knowledge of everything," said Kim, of Los Angeles. Ryan, a freshman at John Marshall High School near Griffith Park, said he does mental exercises between classes to refresh his memory. He also reads the New York Times, looking for words his doesn't fully understand. "I write it down on index cards to study," he said.
Outside, David Hong, a junior at Tesoro High in Mission Viejo, waited to meet celebrity guest Victor Kim, winner of "America's Best Dance Crew" on MTV. "It's hard to meet our parents' expectations," he said, "but I try my best." He has a 4.0 grade-point average and is tutored in biology, Spanish and pre-calculus. For college, he's leaning toward a chemistry major — or something in sports. "Not as a player," he said, "but analysis or commentary. My dad might like that better."
BJ Bae, the 11-year-old from Plaza Vista School in Irvine, said he handles homework on his own because his mother, Mina Yoon, is busy with her 3-year-old. "We came here to understand how college works," she said.
Michael Chen, visiting from Seoul, heard about it and made time to attend. His mission: Comparing music programs at Yale and Stanford. His daughter began playing the cello at age 5.
"Wherever she desires to go to school," he said, "we want to get her there."
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