From Japan Today:
"It's ironic, but it took this crisis to make universities realize they actually have to educate their students." Atsushi Hamana, president of the Kansai University of International Studies, saying that financial pressures and a lack of students are forcing universities to improve or perish, a big change in a country where higher education has long been viewed as a four-year break before entering the work force. (International Herald Tribune)
The dirty little secret of Japanese higher education is that it is a simulacrum of education. Therefore most companies feel that they will need to train their employees and pay little attention to the field of study or grades, rather they rely on the prestige of the school. I don’t really see it changing yet. I guess slowly you are getting changes like having benchmark TOEIC scores for students before they are allowed to graduate. But essentially, it is business as usual. Low expectations, low standards and little actual learning.
You forgot to say "except for the universities I teach for, those are really exceptional".
I once read that what top financial firms look for in an MBA is not what the student learns, but that she was talented enough to get into a top school, not to mention confident and motivated enough to commit huge $ sums to her education. I remember thinking they should simply recruit successful MBA applicants and skip the long expensive bit of completing a degree at Harvard or Wharton.
Perhaps a bit of the same principal applies here...
Posted by: Arie | July 01, 2007 at 12:29 PM
I wish I could say that "my unveristy is the exception" in all honesty, but I think this problem is insitutional rather than in a few isolated universities. It won't change until the system has changed, and things change either very slowly or very quickly in Japan.
Posted by: MC | July 02, 2007 at 10:05 PM