No. of patent applications by universities up 3.7 times+

The number of patent applications filed during fiscal 2006 by higher education facilities, such as public and private universities, stood at 9,090, 3.7 times higher than fiscal 2003, according to comparable data, the education ministry said Wednesday.

In the reporting year, 2,872 applications were licensed, showing a 15.5-fold increase from three years earlier, according to the Ministry of Education, Culture, Sports, Science and Technology.
Each university "has apparently tried to put the fruits of its research into practical use for survival," a ministry official said.

Among the 9,090, 7,003, or 77 percent, were filed by national institutions, with Kyoto University top of the list having applied for 552 patents.

Private institutions filed 1,718 whereas 369 were filed by public institutions, according to the ministry.

Meanwhile, the University of Tokyo obtained 890 licenses, the highest among the institutions.
Ninety-eight institutions received royalties of about 801 million yen in total, with Nagoya University, known for establishing a base of manufacturing technology for blue light emitting diode, receiving the highest amount of 164 million yen.
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No. of Japanese universities to decline: British academic

LONDON — Japan's higher education system faces "an implosion" due to oversupply and a falling birthrate, according to research from a British academic. Roger Goodman, a Japan expert from Oxford University, says the situation will make it increasingly difficult for the less prestigious and smaller establishments to remain operating as they currently are.

Many institutions — high estimates suggest 40%, low around 15% — will go bankrupt, merge or be taken over within the decade, according to Goodman. He writes, "The Japanese higher education system is facing a contraction, possibly better described as an implosion, of a type not previously ever seen before." Goodman believes that the crisis will lead to a growing "polarization" in higher education, with demand for places at Japan's lower-level universities declining dramatically.

http://www.japantoday.com/jp/news/429202

Japan open for India's lessons

JAPAN is suffering a crisis of confidence these days about its ability to compete with its emerging Asian rivals, China and India. But even in this fad-obsessed nation, one result was never expected: a growing craze for Indian education.

Despite an improved economy, many Japanese are feeling insecure about the nation's schools, which once turned out students who consistently ranked at the top of international tests. That is no longer true, which is why many Japanese are looking for lessons from India, the country they see as the world's ascendant education superpower.

Bookstores are filled with titles such as Extreme Indian Arithmetic Drills and The Unknown Secrets of the Indians. Newspapers carry reports of Indian children memorising multiplication tables far beyond nine times nine, the standard for young elementary students in Japan.

Japan's few Indian international schools are reporting a surge in applications from Japanese families.

At the Little Angels English Academy & International Kindergarten, the textbooks are from India, most of the teachers are South Asian, and classroom posters depict animals out of Indian tales. The pupils even colour maps of India in the green and saffron of its flag. Little Angels is in the Tokyo suburb of Mitaka, where only one of its 45 students is Indian. Most are Japanese.

Viewing another Asian country as a model in education, or almost anything else, would have been unheard-of just a few years ago, say education experts and historians. Much of Japan has long looked down on the rest of Asia, priding itself on being the region's most advanced nation.

Indeed, Japan has dominated the continent for more than a century, first as an imperial power and more recently as the first Asian economy to achieve Western levels of economic development.

But in the past few years Japan has grown increasingly insecure, gripped by fear that it is being overshadowed by India and China, which are rapidly gaining in economic weight and sophistication. The government has tried to preserve Japan's technological lead and strengthen its military. But the Japanese have been forced to shed their traditional indifference to the region.
http://www.theage.com.au/news/education-news/japan-open-for-indias-lessons/2008/02/22/1203467395767.html
Grudgingly, Japan is starting to respect its neighbours. "Until now, Japanese saw China and India as backwards and poor," says Yoshinori Murai, a professor of Asian cultures at Sophia University in Tokyo. "As Japan loses confidence in itself, its attitudes towards Asia are changing. It has started seeing India and China as nations with something to offer."

Last month a national cry of alarm greeted the announcement by the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development that in a survey of maths skills, Japan had fallen from first place in 2000 to 10th place, behind Taiwan, Hong Kong and South Korea. From second in science in 2000, Japan dropped to sixth place.
China has stirred more concern in Japan as a political and economic challenger but India has emerged as the country to beat in a more benign rivalry over education. In part, this reflects China's image in Japan as a cheap manufacturer and technological imitator. But India's success in software development, internet businesses and knowledge-intensive industries in which Japan has failed to make inroads has set off more than a tinge of envy.
Most annoying for many Japanese is that the aspects of Indian education they now praise are similar to those that once made Japan famous for its work ethic and discipline: learning more at an earlier age, an emphasis on memorisation and cramming, and a focus on the basics, particularly in maths and science.
India's more demanding education standards are apparent at the Little Angels Kindergarten and are its main selling point. Its two-year-old pupils are taught to count to 20, three-year-olds are introduced to computers, and five-year-olds learn to multiply, solve maths word problems and write one-page essays in English, tasks most Japanese schools do not teach until at least year 2.
Japan's anxieties about its declining competitiveness echo the the angst of the US decades ago, when Japan was the economic upstart.
As with many new things in Japan, the interest in Indian-style education quickly became a fad. Indian education is a frequent topic in forums such as talk shows. Popular books claim to reveal the Indian secrets for multiplying and dividing multiple-digit numbers. Even Japan's conservative education ministry has begun discussing Indian methods, says Jun Takai of the ministry's international affairs division.
Eager parents try to send their children to Japan's roughly half-dozen Indian schools, hoping for an edge on the competitive college entrance exams. In Tokyo, the two largest Indian schools, which teach kindergarten through to year 8, mainly to Indian expatriates, received a sudden increase in inquiries from Japanese parents starting last year.
The Global Indian International School says 20 of its about 200 students are now Japanese, with demand so high from Indian and Japanese parents that it is building a second campus in the neighbouring city of Yokohama.

The other, the India International School in Japan, just expanded to 170 students last year, including 10 Japanese. It already has plans to expand again.
Japanese parents have expressed very high interest in Indian schools, says Nirmal Jain, principal of the India International School.
The boom has had the side effect of making many Japanese a little more tolerant towards other Asians. The founder of the Little Angels school, Jeevarani Angelina says she initially had difficulty persuading landlords to rent space to an Indian woman to start a school. But now, it's a selling point that she and three of her four full-time teachers are non-Japanese Asians.
"When I started, it was a first to have an English-language school taught by Asians, not Caucasians," she says, referring to the long presence here of American and European international schools.
Unlike other Indian schools, Ms Angelina says, Little Angels was intended primarily for Japanese children, to meet the need she had found when she sent her sons to Japanese kindergarten.
"I was lucky because I started when the Indian-education boom started," Ms Angelina says.
She has adapted the curriculum to Japan with more group activities, less memorisation and no Indian history. She plans to open an Indian-style primary school this year. Parents are enthusiastic about the school's rigorous standards.
"My son's level is higher than those of other Japanese children the same age," says Eiko Kikutake, whose son Hayato, 5, attends Little Angels. "Indian education is really amazing! This wouldn't have been possible at a Japanese kindergarten."
-- NEW YORK TIMES

Few Takers for Japanese at HSC level (Pune)

PUNE: The Maharashtra state board for secondary and higher secondary education's move to introduce Japanese language at the higher secondary certificate (HSC, Class XII) level, has met with a rather lukewarm response. Barely 14 students from a solitary institution in Mumbai will appear for the first Japanese paper as part of the HSC exam which begins from February 28.

The paper is scheduled for 11 am to 2 pm on March 14. Board chairperson Vijaysheela Sardesai confirmed the figure while speaking to TOI on Friday evening. "This is the first year when the test for Japanese will be part of the overall exam schedule. We hope more students will add to Japanese studies at the junior college level (Class XI and XII) in the years to follow," she said.

What comes as a surprise is the fact that no academic institution in Pune — which accounts for India's largest pool of Japanese learners at the higher education level — opted for the subject despite the immense career potential offered by Japanese language in the emerging global economy.

On an annual basis, 2,600 people from Pune take Japanese Language Proficiency Test (JLPT) for different levels of proficiency. The city has 22 amateur as well as professional bodies and individual tutors for Japanese.

The Japanese Students' Services Organisation (Jasso), a body under Japan's ministry of education, looks at Pune as a crucial base for promoting Japanese language. All this, considering that the demand for Japanese language interpreters and teachers, especially at the Nikkyu level of conversation skill, is high in the infotech and management sectors. The response from junior colleges to the board's initiative is surprising in this context.

The state education board introduced Japanese subject at the junior college level in 2006-07 with a specific objective of presenting the students an opportunity to catch up with the language at an early age. Former board chairman Vasant Kalpande, under whose tenure the initiative was taken, explained, "Japanese companies are fast emerging at the global stage.

Japanese investment in India has been on the rise. Keeping this in view, we worked on introducing the language at junior college level". Prior to Japanese, the board had introduced French, German, Persian, Russian and Arabic. "The Japanese consulate in Mumbai offered help in enabling the state board prepare the syllabus, reference material and text books," said Kalpande.

http://timesofindia.indiatimes.com/Pune/Few_takers_for_Japanese_at_HSC_level/articleshow/2808896.cms

Over 9,400 foreign students earn degrees in Japan

The number of foreign students who earned academic degrees in Japan came to 9,446 in fiscal 2006, up 86 percent from fiscal 2001, the Japan Student Services Organization said Saturday.

Of them, 6,900 earned master's degrees, with 2,637 majoring in social sciences such as political studies, economics or sociology, said the organization affiliated with the education ministry.

It said 84 percent of the master's candidates were able to obtain the degree in two years.

The remaining 2,546 students obtained Ph.Ds, half of whom were able to earn theirs in three to four years, it said. Of them, 658 students majored in engineering, it added.

Of the degree earners in fiscal 2006 through March last year, 62 percent with master's remained in Japan for jobs or further research, and 27 percent returned to their homelands, according to the organization.

Of the doctorate degree holders, 36 percent remained in Japan and 47 percent returned to their homelands to take jobs or continue research, it said.

The number of foreign students at graduate schools in Japan came to a record 31,592 in fiscal 2007.

"Graduate schools in Japan have gradually expanded their programs for foreign students since the Central Education Council proposed accepting more of them in 2003," an organization official said.
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