It wasn't so long ago that a doctorate was the passport to a plum job and high social standing.
Those days are gone.
Today, many post-graduate students are finding it hard to land research or full-time positions at universities.
They are paying the price for having come up through the ranks at a time when government policy was to increase the number of graduate students even though there weren't sufficient academic or research posts to accommodate them all.
A fiscal 2005 survey by the Ministry of Education, Culture, Sports, Science and Technology found that 15,923 people with doctorates did not hold full-time positions as instructors or researchers at universities, research institutions or companies.
The government decided to double the number of graduate students from 1991. As a result, the number of people admitted to doctoral programs rose from 7,813 in fiscal 1990 to 18,232 in fiscal 2003. The figure has stayed above 17,000 each year since.
Of the 15,973 who completed their degrees in 2006, only 62 percent found jobs, according to the education ministry. About 14 percent landed teaching posts at universities and elsewhere.
Thirty-six percent of the graduates from that year had no full-time positions, instead working in temporary, or "post doc," research positions, among others.
One man who spent years without a post after obtaining his doctorate in 1996 is now 44.
His expertise is in theoretical physics. Finally, though, the man will become an associate professor at a university next spring.
He had applied for university teaching posts on more than 100 occasions.
After obtaining his degree, he served as a paid researcher for only 5 1/2 years on a limited contract.
For the remaining period, he had to pay fees to secure places at universities to conduct research. He survived by working as a part-time lecturer at a number of universities, teaching at cram schools and checking inventories at libraries.
That was the only way he could afford to participate in academic meetings and international conferences to keep up with his field of expertise.
He was published in academic journals once every year.
A 37-year-old astronomer obtained his doctorate in 1999 but now works as an assistant at a university and is in charge of managing a computer server.
His contract expires next March.
He took out a 5-million-yen loan from the Japan Scholarship Foundation (now Japan Student Services Organization) when he was a graduate school student.
Currently, he is allowed to suspend repayment of the scholarship loan for a maximum of five years. He will be exempted from paying back the loan altogether if he is a member of a university's teaching staff or in other specified posts for at least 15 years, a system that has since been terminated.
"I am under constant stress while I am working on a limited-term contract as I have to continue looking for the next job," he said. "I find it difficult to take part in long-term projects when I can't see what will happen to me next year."
Ushio Fujikura, 28, a developmental molecular geneticist, completed a doctorate course in March and found a job in April as a researcher with a renewable one-year term at the graduate school of the University of Tokyo.
He said that he anticipates working under temporary contracts for several years before he lands a stable post.
"There are many people who obtained doctorates before I did who have not yet found stable work," he said.
Fujikura does not agree with the argument that Ph.D. graduates have difficulty finding employment because they stick to posts at universities and stay away from companies.
"Information about university research functions is accessible but I know little about what goes on at company research units," he said.
"There are many talented people with doctorates who have failed to find posts that reflect their talents. Doctorate graduates are national assets in whom the government has invested taxpayers' money. The government will benefit by making the best use of them."
Unlike in the United States, where graduate students are encouraged to join the corporate world or start their own businesses, Japanese doctorate holders invariably are steered to careers in academia, said Kazuyuki Miura, deputy chief of the education ministry's University Promotion Division.
"Graduate schools have educated students in a way that leaves them no other choice than to become researchers," Miura said.
Satoshi Mukuta, a senior official of the Nippon Keidanren (Japan Business Federation), noted a widespread assumption that those in doctorate courses will stay in academia.
He also noted that people with doctorates cannot always produce immediate results as expected by employer companies.
Some university officials regret they so readily went along with the government drive to raise the number of graduate students.(IHT/Asahi: June 25,2007)
http://www.asahi.com/english/Herald-asahi/TKY200706250069.html
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